Is There A Future For Last.fm?
It has been clear for a while now that getting the dollars of the music lovers on the internet is a war being fought on two fronts. There are streaming services like Spotify on one end and there is the iTunes digital Music Store on the other end. So far the latter has been the one pushing boundaries but it looks like the action is moving towards the streaming services.
iTunes is now in the defensive corner. With iCloud Apple has been forced to enter the cloud terrain, a terrain where it is inexperienced and hardly comfortable. With iTunes Ping Apple has shown that it is capable of failing in ventures like that. The imagination to deliver the amazing experience usually associated with Apple’s devices has obviously been lacking in Ping. I would not bet my money that iTunes Match is going to be a game changer either. This service puts all your previously “legally” purchased music in their cloud and provides you with a DRM’ed version of it for a measly 25$ per year.
Now Facebook is entering the battlefield. Whether they participate in this race as a hobby or are there to win remains to be seen, but it looks that their collaboration with Spotify and other streaming services puts them in pole position either way. The tight collaboration with these services will make sure Facebook will have a big part of the data of your future listening habits.
Apple joining forces with Facebook is not very probable to happen in the near future, so how they will tackle the social part of music remains a big open question. But as for delivering music to users, they have a head start. They have deals for the biggest collection of music and manufacture the most popular devices that this music is going to be played upon. Not any streaming service is going to match their experience anytime soon.
What about Last.fm? Their position in this race would be the one of the driver that was promising to catch the lead, never did and now has a hard time staying in the race. Their integration with iTunes has never been tight and still isn’t. Scrobbling requires installing extra add-ons which most users don’t even know exist. The pay wall looks like a gamble that lost them a lot of users. The user experience on the social network part of Last.fm is more than three years behind Facebook and the user base of Facebook is something Last.fm can only dream of.
If streaming services take off they will also loose a big part of the scrobbles. As all of their business has been built around that data this will most probably mean game over for them. How can they turn their fate around?
Me, I am a fan of Last.fm. I can criticize it for not being good enough or for not moving fast enough, but the core idea of a social network dedicated to music lovers, much like LinkedIn is a social network for professionals is valuable. On top of that Last.fm is a big wiki of data about music, all of which comes under a liberal creative commons license. What is there not to like?
There are still opportunities. Consider the difference between music lovers and people that listen to music. As there are gamers and people that occasionally play games, as there are amateur photographers and people that occasionally post photos on a website there is a group of people that wants to take their interest further than most other people do.
Facebook wants to do everything and in that also lies its weakness. What I would immensely care about is a social network where I can connect with people that are like-minded about music and that social circle will at best only partially overlap with the people I know on Facebook.
There is a need for a dedicated social network, like LinkedIn and Flickr. Yet even the biggest music lovers amongst my friends stay on Facebook and have only a vague interest in Last.fm. That is where Last.fm is missing the boat. Those are the hearts and minds that need to be conquered as quickly as possible.
This might be too big a shift in focus for a company like Last.fm to take. They pertain to CBS now, and a major commercial television network does not strike me as an structure that will welcome new directions away from pop culture and big dollars.
But things are moving quickly, my guess is that we will find out soon enough.
This article was inspired by this excellent post on evolver.fm
