Last.fm is now independent

nubinetwork

I don't know if I even have an account anymore, its been like 15 years since I last logged in...

john_strinlai

the previous owner doesnt appear to be mentioned in the post (or, at least, not easily found). CBS Coporation (owned by Paramount) bought last.fm in 2007

donalhunt

This seems like a positive step. It never made sense (to me at least) for CBS Paramount to own it. Huge opportunity to allow folk to own their own (meta)data. /fingerscrossed

ale

Man i love last.fm even though it's been technically superseded (for most people) by Spotify's recommendation features. It just fit so well in the zeitgeist of 2000's indie scene, microblogs, early social media.

BadBadJellyBean

I honestly forgot last.fm was a thing. But good for them that they have independence now.

jauntywundrkind

Last.fm & in particular audioscrobbling has been such an amazing joy to have in the world. Music is so important to me, and it's amazing having this system to help see over time what friends and I myself enjoy. These days, for auduiscrobbling, I recommend folks use either teal.fm (which alas is somewhat DIY or find-a-friend for their API service) or rocksky.app. There's a better credible exit, as it's based on atproto/Bluesky protocols, and a richer world of apps & interconnectivitiws emerging.

Scene_Cast2

I remember Last.fm's value proposition was 1) discovery and 2) community. (1) is (mostly, for most people) covered by "feed" algorithms of Spotify and YouTube. I wonder how they're going to position themselves now.

attilagyorffy

This is very exciting. The music landscape is just as chaotic as it was back in 2007 (when CBS acquired Last.fm) if not even more complex these days. Can't wait to see what's next. <3

heldrida

Last.fm used to be special, but this was a long time ago. Just tried to login, recovered the password and seems that its just a tracker nowadays. In the past I could listen to music and drop a comment, meet new people, etc.

desireco42

And I try to "Start Now" Your request was blocked To protect our website, our security firewall has flagged this request as potentially unsafe. Please try clearing your cookies and refreshing the page. If the problem persists, try again later or on a different computer network. Error 406 :) I think this is fantastic change and wish them the best, this is probably just a small hickup I experienced and I wil try again later. BTW, I recently cancelled my youtube premium, it was just too expensive. Never was subscribed to Spotify, so I need different ways to listen to music.

sparrish

So CBS spun them back out as their own corp or did the employee's or someone else buy it from CBS? Just declaring themselves independent without details doesn't provide much context. I feel like Michael Scott just declared bankruptcy.

jaimie

I still use last.fm via Spotify. It is wild to see my entire listening history from 11th grade to present (20 years!). Always fun to poke through and see changes from one year or life phase to the next.

walthamstow

What a blast from the past. It was a pretty cool time to be a teenager in 04-06 with last.fm, MySpace, iPods, Limewire and music blogs.

fontain

"The company has generated an operating loss for the year to 31 December 2024 of £690,252 (2023: profit of £1,509,544) and revenue of £2,215,381 (2023: £1,960,340). As at 31 December 2024, net liabilities were £45,506,488 (2023: £44,855,202)." "The financial statements have been prepared on a going concern basis on the grounds that Paramount Global has confirmed that it will continue to provide financial and other support to Last. FM Limited at least for the next twelve months and thereafter for the foreseeable future to enable Last.FM Limited to continue to meet all its liabilities as they fall due." I wonder what their financing plan is, and what shape this independence will take, whether Paramount is retaining a minority ownership take? Seems like they might just be able to scrape break even based on current revenue.

whalesalad

115,000 scrobbles: https://www.last.fm/user/whalesalad I really only ever used it so that a girl I liked would be able to see what I was listening to. She commented on my page. We ended up getting together for a few years. I miss my youth.

cdrnsf

There's still a ton of value in the historical recommendations on last.fm's site. What its future looks like, I'm not sure. I'd love to know who is going to operate it now that it is independent. I'd recommend ListenBrainz for folks interested in similar tracking and some recommendations with clearer ownership. For my own historical interests, I have a Navidrome plugin writing to my own API and surface charts across time periods by querying the postgres database it writes to.

quirino

last.fm is one of my very favorite services. It's rough around the edges in some parts, but I've gotten incredible value from it. A couple of websites built on it that I check out from time to time: - https://lastfmviz.netlify.app/ - shows what you've been listening to as a grid of album covers. You can scroll down as long as you want. It's cool to look back and remember where I was when listening to specific music. - https://lastfmstats.com/ - generates tons of rankings, line charts, racing bar charts, etc. A couple I like: "Artist streaks" (I listened to Pavement tracks 122 times in a row in August 2023), "Unique artists in a single month" (225 in July 2025) and "Unique weeks per artist/album/track" (good to identify what you're always listening to vs. what you listened to heavily in a specific time) - https://pmcdonough8133.github.io/last.timer/ - shows your listening rankings by hours, minutes instead of just scrobble count. This really should be a default feature in the site, as some artists have average track length 2-3x times of others. If you use Spotify, another site I've had loads of fun with is https://explorify.link/ .

simonw

This is awesome! Anyone know who the humans behind the new company are?

_-_-__-_-_-

Listenbrainz has been an excellent alternative for me.

larrykubin

I have a history going back to 2012, which is great. I've always worried Spotify would stop working with last.fm, I wonder if this makes it more or less likely.