A big beef with Last.fm

Well, I’ve finally give up on Last.fm when it comes to the iPod. With the launch of the redesign, Last.fm has given up official support of anything but their main player application — which isn’t terrible, it’s just not integrated in an elegant way with iTunes like a plugin or a menu extra would. It’s a big ol’ app that sits in your dock and takes up lots of resources. I’d been having bad problems with the iScrobbler app not submitting my iPod tracks, so I suspected as much — something’s changed somewhat with the launch of the new site, but now the site has an excuse not to go and fix it.

In case you don’t know, Last.fm aggressively battles spam by throwing away submission data that has conflicting play times, is submitted too quickly, doesn’t follow in time with other submissions, and other criteria. This has always caused big problems when trying to use apps that sync the iPod to Last.fm because you absolutely must submit your iPod tracks before any desktop tracks are played or submitted, lest their time-stamps be earlier than the most recent ones on file at Last.fm and be thrown out. This kind of thing happens regularly because people don’t think like programs and meticulously plan out how they use their music player. In fact, the programs should help sort these problems out and let people be, well, people.

Guys, I know you want to keep people from spamming your site — it’s great you’re this dedicated to it — but it’s ridiculous that this data is ignored or thrown away. I do 90% of my music listening off my iPod (I bring it to work, plug it into some powered speakers, and run with it all day long) and let’s face it, you’re not going to win me over to paying for a subscription by forcing me to use my iPod or my music library in a different way(1) just because you haven’t figure out a better way to handle it. I’ve been waiting for a better iPod solution before dropping coin on this but it’s clear you’re not going to do it.

Here’s an idea: don’t throw it away. Keep it. Let users work with it. Just don’t consider that data in charts or use it for public use. Allow users to see badly submitted data for their own edification and for exploring into other people’s libraries. That would be a start, because you would still have all that info down the road, and you’d be able to retroactively analyze it once you’ve got better spam handling in place. Instead, I’m just sitting, waiting and hoping that Apple deploys some social features in the iTMS soon. Sorry.

(1) I just wanted to add: I literally think “Oh my god, did I update the iPod?!” before playing files in iTunes. Three or four days of straight iPod listening would be erased in a heartbeat because of a careless what’s-that-song-again double-click on the computer. This is a horrible thing to feel and I’m so glad to have finally stopped caring enough about my profile to finally get away from it.