Last.fm for Android: Daily App Pick

Posted By Becket Morgan

BreakingModern — Last.fm helps you find music based on artists you love and provides a comprehensive picture of your listening history across hundreds of devices and apps. Its music discovery features take information about what artists you love and what music you listen to and then deliver personalized suggestions based on your listening history.

In addition to collecting information about your music habits and suggesting new music, Last.fm offers a collection of image galleries and tour dates for many of your favorite artists. With more than 54 million artists and 640 million tracks in its library, Last.fm will undoubtedly have all your favorite tunes, even if they aren’t in the mainstream.

Scrobbler

I think the best feature of Last.fm is the “Scrobbler” — the service that collects your listening information across multiple devices and apps and collates it into your personal listening profile. The Scrobbler tracks information about which songs you play and how often, which songs you like the most, how much you’ve played a specific artist over a certain period of time and other similar data. By comparing data about different combinations of songs and artists played by millions of listeners worldwide, Last.fm is able to make finely tuned suggestions of other artists and songs you might enjoy based on your listening history.

Having a Last.fm account is required in order to access the scrobbling features, but the app’s registration process is simple and painless. You’ll be asked to enter some of your favorite artists into your music library, link your various devices and apps to your Last.fm account for scrobbling purposes, then add your personal details and you’re ready to go. With more than 600 apps and devices Last.fm-enabled, you can add your listening history from almost any device and or music app. The homepage of your Last.fm account will show the artists in your library, a selection of suggested artists based on your listening habits and additional sections. The extra sections offer information about new releases, tour dates, free downloads and more for your favorite artists.

App Mechanics

I found the Last.fm site interactive and easy to navigate, but things started getting sticky when I spent time with the mobile apps. The Last.fm Android app’s most-recent update was in November of 2013, and the clunky and inelegant UI, combined with multiple user-reported crashes, means the Internet radio features of Last.fm are largely inapplicable for me. Similarly, the iOS app (Scrobbler for iOS), which was last updated in January of 2014, is not up to the UI standards of similar music apps, and the features are little more than basic.

Users report they are enjoying the scrobbling features of both apps but are lukewarm — at best — about the music player features. Many users stated that they only keep the app active on their devices for the scrobbling features in order to link their listening preferences to their Last.fm account, but the frustration with multiple crashes and no updates to support newer operating systems has led them to other apps for their music-player needs.

General: ** (two-star rating)

With multiple reports of users experiencing crashes and many reports of difficulty using the app with newer mobile devices or once upgrading to a newer OS, it’s clear that to remain relevant Last.fm needs to spend some time upgrading its mobile apps.

UI: **

With so many apps available for mobile devices, a clean, interactive, user-friendly UI is essential. Unfortunately, the Last.fm apps for both Android and iOS are painfully out of date. They are still functional, if utilitarian, but don’t offer much beyond the basics.

Overall: **

The scrobbling features of Last.fm are fantastic, and having a place where my listening history can be collected and integrated from all my devices is something I haven’t found with any other service. On the other hand, to remain relevant amid a sea of listening apps, Last.fm must spend some time updating its mobile apps and providing more seamless access to its users.

Last.fm is available free for Android on Google Play and Apple iOS. It’s also available (and probably best) in a browser format.

For BMod, I’m Becket Morgan.

All screenshots: Becket Morgan

Featured/Header image: “last.fm hack” by Leon Brocard via Flickr Creative Commons