Last.fm is now independent

Man i love last.fm even though it's been technically superseded (for most people) by Spotify's recommendation features.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.

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/.

I love last.fm but never understood the URL structure naming convention. Why use a "+" instead of a "-" for every band page (e.g. https://www.last.fm/music/The+Beatles).

I thought Kebab-case is usually the norm, and I don't think I've seen the "+" in any other URL paths that aren't query strings. Any ideas why they formatted it like this?

Happy to see they mentioned their API usage won't change. Last year I was working on a small project (https://listeningfacts.com) around spotify's API but they decided to suddenly restrict access to it.

I was able to make it work with last.fm's API with no issue and they're more generous with the information they provide.

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

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.

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.

I've used last.fm since the beginning and I still use it to scrobble. I hope it goes back to the more open api and the ability to more freely customize the profile pages like was possible back before last.fm 2.0 or whatever it was when they massively overhauled everything.

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.

yay! I love last.fm so much and glad they can maintain the platform

The last time it was mentioned here, perhaps a couple of weeks ago, I tried to warm up my old last.fm account.

I once used it for a long time, but that time was maybe 20 years ago now. I wasn't even sure what my username, password, or email address would have been -- but I had some guesses.

So I guessed a few times. I guessed wrong. The wrong guesses apparently blocked me, since the sign-up page now always goes 403 for me.

When I tried with my pocket supercomputer instead, the infection spread to its signature as well: It 403s there, too.

Fun times.

Another alternative is listenbrainz [0], which is also self-hostable [1]. A smaller, lightweight, single user selfhostable alternative, and more about just the stats is Koito [2], and finally because obviously you want to scrobble everywhere at once, you can self-host Multi Scrobbler to scrobble to and from multiple sources at once. Yes, I like scrobbling ;)

[0]: https://listenbrainz.org/

[1]: https://github.com/metabrainz/listenbrainz-server

[2]: https://github.com/gabehf/Koito/

[3]: https://github.com/FoxxMD/multi-scrobbler/

I hope this is a good change for last.fm! I love the service but it's been trickier to use since I switched from Spotify to Apple Music.

Does anyone have a setup they're happy with for scrobbling from Apple Music across different types of devices?

I love Last.fm, I've been scrobbling for over 20 years now.

It's amazing to me that they have managed to stick around like they have. They're very much an "old internet" site, and I hope they can stick around for many many more years.

Many many years ago I wrote a small platform to serve as an off-ramp for Last users. They had just been acquired and it wasn't going over super well with users. "What I listen to" (coworker suggested the name), shortened to wilt.

17 year old me had no idea what I was getting into. It was the best and worst project I've ever worked on.

A lot of respect to the guys and girls still working on Last and I'm very excited to see where it goes from here.

Congratulations (I guess), but what does “independent” mean here? Who bought it from whom (and why)? Is it employee owned now? Is it transitioning to a foundation?

Is anyone using last.fm in 2026? This made sense when people were playing MP3s in their Windows Media Player or Winamp, but as 99% of the people just stream music now, what is the purpose of this service?

It has been maybe a decade since I met someone who actually uses the service.

Wow, I hope this is good news! I'm in my 21st year of scrobbling and still so obsessed with the stats. Just recently, I built a browser extension [1] to make batch editing more convenient and to get even more data about my scrobbles.

[1] https://github.com/hummingme/scrobblescrubbler

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

I'm glad I kept using an Audioscrobbler since 2008. Right now I have it hooked up to Spotify, but I've used one with foobar2000 for non-streaming, and have found other players to have the functionality for the most part (at least the ones I've made use of). I even had an extension for Chrome and Firefox that would send the data from YouTube's website when I used to listen to music on there.

Happy they are independent and allowing access to their API. Seems like it may be time to work on a personal project to track the data in a way that matters to me, rather than just what you normally get built in.

one of the very first programming projects I took on was to figure out how to scrobble the records that I was playing. It was my first exposure to so many things: Ruby, FFIs, audio processing, audio fingerprinting (I think I used echo nest ?). Ended up going to local meetups to ask for advice.

last.fm is one of those services that is from the pinnacle of the open web.

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.

Congratulations to last.fm on this, although I'm not sure what I can do that actually "scrobbles" at this point. I went to their download page for the Mac desktop app, which somewhat forebodingly referred to "what you've been playing in iTunes" rather than Apple Music, and downloaded it anyway. It's an Intel-only app, not universal, and it doesn't appear to be signed, so macOS Tahoe screams about it being possible malware.

After going through the hula dance to open it anyway, it looks like it's working, but it sure doesn't look like it's received a lot of love recently.

Wish I'd kept using my last.fm account. It's a shame that although Apple + Spotify both allow you to download your full listening history you can't upload it (and keep dates/times) to fill out your historical data. I'd start using it in a heartbeat again if they allowed that.

I'm mostly unfamiliar with the current offering of last.fm, but the name is familiar from way back. Glad to see something well-liked reclaim some independence.

At a glance, they're providing an interface to YT sourced content with some value adds around tracking or categorizing listening.

A quick question for users: can the site itself be configured as a listener without streaming / displaying the video? In general, YT has a lot of music, but the perf hit of streaming typically high-quality video as well is a blocker when doing dev work on my main machine.

Great news! Related[0]. The presentation video in the linked article from 2002 is a gem.

0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46266875

This is great news! I worked on the redesign and replatform with last.fm when they were part CBS Interactive. They were a lovely team of engineers and designers who cared about their product, and I appreciated their culture. Fun memories spending time in London with the team. Glad to hear they found a new home!

I've moved over to ListenBrainz, it's quite nice and I like that the data is open and not trying to be monitized

Unfortunately, unable to create an account on my laptop (WiFi) or phone (Verizon) - even in incognito.

> 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

edit: maybe they saw my message or fixed a bug? signup now works everywhere for me.

Listenbrainz has been an excellent alternative for me.

Looking forward to scrobbling again

Back in the day, was heavily influenced by last.fm for this BBC 6music GWAP mooso.fm

https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radiolabs/2009/12/mooso.shtml

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

I loved last.fm when every tag was a custom radio station..

It's not anymore, right?

I hope that means it will improve now. There's such a rich space of features that they could do. Had some hope with their experimental Labs but I remember being underwhelmed and not seeing anything about it recently.

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

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.

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.

No idea what last.fm is. Clicked the logo at the top of the forum, but that's one of those prank links that takes you to the page you're already on. Typed in last.fm manually and got

Your request was blocked

To protect our website, our security firewall has flagged this request as potentially unsafe.

i recommend installing a browser add-on like https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/web-scrobbler...

May be they will once again invest in their smartphone app.

Interesting! Hope they have a super lean team, and just focus on the niche, legacy web experience.

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

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.

Clicked join: "Your request was blocked. To protect our website, our security firewall has flagged this request as potentially unsafe."

Linux, Firefox, uBlock Origin. Nothing else special. I've really been looking for an alternative too. Thanks for at least showing me what to expect before sign up. Guess I'll pass.

Love last.fm

may it live a long life

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.

It was such a hassle exporting my data from last.fm to libre.fm when they were bought out in 2007 (and then all the founders left in 2009). But I'm glad I did it. While it's nice that last.fm is "independent" now, they're still for-profit and probably should be avoided.

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.

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.

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

Some previous discussions on this note:

Last.fm and Audioscrobbler Herald the Social Web: 2002

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46266875

Last.fm turns 20

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33722862

"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.

Anyone else music listening habits change in the past six months to listening to one owns AI Slop? My slop (been a real hobby songwriter of melodies & lyrics since a kid..decades ago) has the most meaning to me it’s just not me singing. Now it sounds pro and some ppl when I’m playing it actually like it vs. my own rough demos (guitar, vocal and added drums/bass via GarageBand). I actually don’t care if others hear my slop as it’s all my own ideas…words and melodies which have way more meaning then Listening to another’s music/songs.

I’ve been telling close friend about this and then I see this verge article saying in not the only one https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/937059/n...