For the past few weeks I was constantly bumping into articles here and there, talking about the new last.fm beta and all it’s cool and new features, and of course that it would be available to the website subscribers. Well, I’ve been using last.fm for the past 2 years and can call myself a pretty serious user, although somehow I never found it necessary to subscribe, and I never have. So I guess you can imagine my sheer surprise when yesterday morning I received an invitation to the beta, regardless of my status. No clue how this happens, but I’m glad I got the chance to have a look inside, cause there really are some very cool changes. =) So let me see, where to start…
That’s my new profile, and yes I do have a tendency of sneaking into my friends channels and listening to what they’re listening to. As you can see I was stalking amvee.=) Click for larger images.
I guess I better start with the part that is the most important to me, the user profiles. When I first logged into the beta, it took my eyes a couple of seconds to get used to the lack of some of the previous version’s eye candy. There’s a very plain red strip on the top of the page which I’m not the biggest fan of, but perhaps that’s the only part that I’m not a fan of. The first thing that _really_ took my attention and put a smile on my lips, was the answer to my prayers, a perfectly working playlist player on the right column. YAY. YAAAAY. And guess what, my Loved Tracks are now actually good for something as they’re playable through the playlist player. This means that I can get much better a view of what my friends really consider loved music and not just frequently played music, and vice versa. [Yes, I can actually see everybody’s profile on the beta…] The charts are still there, only with more options to play around with. And now there’s something called “Library” that contains information about your listening habits, every artist you ever listened to and the track counts. The Library is customizable, you can have it show whatever you’d like, and it looks great too.
The artist pages also look neat and pretty much the same as user pages. Generally the information is a lot better organized, and it’s much easier to use features like tagging or making a recommendation. Both user and artist profiles have an “activity feed” lower in the page which again, is a pretty neat fature.
Not all the features are working as of yet. As you can see in the screenies, Videos, Charts and Events are yet to be added. But from what I’ve seen on my 1st day, I can say that last.fm did manage to make an even bigger fan of me than I already was. Way to go guys, and thanks for inviting me. =)
