January 11th site update

Welcome to the world of tomorrow!

We're kicking 2012 off with a bundle of new features. No hoverboards yet, but we've got high hopes for 2013. In the meantime, let's see what's new:

• Best of 2011. Once again we stuck a knife between our teeth, pulled our fedora firmly onto our head, & adventured through the scrobbles to discover what Last.fm users listened to most in 2011. Check out the overall chart and the best newcomers! Marvel at the tag and location filters! Coo at the infographics! Download the data and make your own mashups!

• Delveable charts. When you visit someone's profile for the first time you're trying to figure out their musical taste. You get an idea from their recent tracks, their library, & top artist/track charts but it can still be hard to grasp. What are those 113 plays of Ben Folds? A one-off crawl through his discography? One play of a giant best-of compilation? One album – or even one track – on repeat? There's no way to tell. Until now! Now, clicking the chart bar jumps into the user's library to show you. It works for the library overview and your personal charts too – Check it out now on your own profile page.

• Find out what your friends listen to. Now you can see your friends' playcounts on artist pages, with a chart of who listens most. This is fun when browsing some awesome bands, but really comes into its own when indulging in guilty pleasures. You can also click through to a new section that'll show you the complete list – and of course you can delve into these charts too.

• Nicer URLs for our API documentation. If you're a programmer, chances are you've found our API – and seen our ugly URLs. last.fm/api/show?service=270? What's that going to mean when you see it in your browser history? Well, avert thine eyes no longer and gaze lustily upon our new, meaningful URLs: last.fm/api/show/geo.getEvents. Easier to remember, more meaningful, more beautiful.

• Bugfix bonanza. We've fixed a coleopterist's-worth of bugs in this release, including improvements to Last.fm Discover and the Music Manager.

• Bonus blog post! If you're a Deezer user, make sure you're scrobbling it. Remember: if it doesn't scrobble, it doesn't count.

• Bonus tech demo: explore your library. Sometimes we like to put together tech demos to try out ideas and check whether our systems work OK. These can break or disappear at any time – but they can also be fun to play with. With that in mind: go explore your library. See your listening habits over time, find out what you heard last year or on Halloween. And let us know what you think.


That's it for now, but we'll be back soon with more neat stuff.

— Team Last.fm.

if i don't care what my friends are listening to, how can i turn it off?

The Weeknd was first scrobbled in 2010, so it's not eligible for the discoveries list. They're number 70 in the overall list, as you can see from the artist page.

Love the "explore your library" feature. Finally something new... And useful in any way.

HodgeStar said:
this "user-artist-track-from-to" filter: is there an equivalent API call now too?
Not at the moment, but that would be a reasonable addition to the library.getFoo methods.

Friends' playcounts on artist pages is a brilliant idea. Completely loving the other updates as well!

Amazing update, especially the Delveable charts and Find out what your friends listen to !
We're waiting for an official Facebook app now ! ;)

hjbardenhagen said:
Now some Myspace scrobbling, please. ;-) Firefox Greasemonkey-script to the rescue.

Thanks for the new features.

I take it the translations will be completed / corrected at some point? e.g.
from http://lastfm.ru/user/Iskra42463/library/explore

For 1.6 years, from суббота 19 Июнь 2010 to среда 11 Январь 2012.
42 608 tracks played in total.
Ouch. :)

I love all the new updates, they're awesome but I find that a lot of the playcounts on the 'Who listens most' are wrong. On Taylor Swift's page, for example, it says I've listened 844 times when I've actually listened 6,935, so am I missing something?

I like Delvable Charts and Explore Your Library. The total tracks played in the latter is a few hundred tracks short but I guess it is still in development. :)

'Who Listens Most' is great. I had been using the GreaseMonkey script that shows which friends listened, but it checks each individual friend's library, so it's not very efficient.

Exploring your library would be better if it showed top artists/tracks charts. So when you click into a particular year, you can see your top artists for that year. Similar to the last 3/6 months charts, but for any timeframe - year, month, day.

Roblarr said:
I love all the new updates, they're awesome but I find that a lot of the playcounts on the 'Who listens most' are wrong. On Taylor Swift's page, for example, it says I've listened 844 times when I've actually listened 6,935, so am I missing something?I haven't seen any gaps that huge, but most of the numbers are slightly off for me. Some are higher. It shows me 3665 for Metallica instead of 3628, so I think it's counting plays I've deleted.

"Find out what your friends listen to"

+1 love it :-)