Last.fm is now independent

Re:Last.fm is now independent by bool3max on Wednesday May 27, 2026 @03:38PM (#48299441)

For me last.fm's value lies in the community aspect: you can leave a comment on any artist, album, or individual track's page. There's not a single other place on the internet where I can go to to see what the people think of a song I'm listening to at any given moment (apart from perhaps YouTube, but we all know what the comments there are like - last.fm attracts a more sophisticated crowd by nature).

Unfortunately they have recently taken a rather drastic step towards undermining this community aspect of the site by gating the comment (or "shout", as they call it) box behind a "SEE WHAT OTHERS ARE SAYING BUTTON". Previously the top 5-10 comments would by default be visible on every artist/album/track page, but now there's an extra level of indirection you've go to go through to see or post comments. The move was never justified despite the vocal community's outrage on their forums [1], but I suspect it's got something to do with the site's poor performance, as previously comments failed to load about 30% of the time. Strange, yeah.

I've cancelled my Pro subscription a while ago as a result, but I'm excited to see what their independence from Paramount will bring.

[1]: https://support.last.fm/t/artist-shoutbox/117534

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Re:Last.fm is now independent by ilikegreen on Wednesday May 27, 2026 @04:42PM (#48300346)

I think RateYourMusic also allows for commenting pretty much on everything (and it also extends to film and, IIRC, videogames).

It might not be as friendly as last.fm on the surface, but it is surely richer in content, and more diverse. It's a gem, and I hope Sonemnic (?) doesn't drive it to the ground.

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Re:Last.fm is now independent by bool3max on Wednesday May 27, 2026 @05:22PM (#48300911)

For me it doesn't really compare: with Last.FM all I've gotta do is navigate to my profile and the song I'm _currently_ playing on Spotify is right at the top, I just click it and boom, I'm on the track's page.

Besides, you can't leave comments under specific tracks on RYM.

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Re:Last.fm is now independent by BoingBoomTschak on Thursday May 28, 2026 @02:44AM (#48305474)

> I hope Sonemnic (?) doesn't drive it to the ground.

It already has. Between the worst kind of Reddit tier moderation, the extreme anti-scraping measure affecting humans (can only access album pages from artist pages here, I get 503 errors otherwise) and the hiding of its forum from public view, it's already lying on said ground.

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