Corporate web communication: Lastfm

Résumé du document

Last.fm is a open content music community website and also an Internet radio station with music recommendation system based on each user's and friends' musical taste on the base of a collaborative filter. Objective of this site is to become the biggest music database completed by all users and developing communities for sharing musical taste. Last.fm was founded in 2002 by Felix Miller, Martin Stiksel, Michael Breidenbruecker and Thomas Willomitzer, all from Austria and Germany, as an internet radio station and music community site, using similar music profiles to generate dynamic playlists. The 'love' and 'ban' buttons allowed users to gradually customize their profiles. Last.fm won the Europrix 2002 and was nominated for the Prix Ars Electronica in 2003, before merging 2005 with Audioscrobbler.net's system, which is "system is a database that tracks listening habits and does wonderful things with statistics. It calculates relationships and recommendations based on the music people listen to." Now developed in 11 languages, Last.fm is becoming a worldwide music information sharing portal.

Extraits

[...] Then it appears that global finding of the website typing keywords like “download” do not link to the last.fm website until you type in the search engine. It is obvious that regarding competitors, such keywords will mostly link to paying websites with musical content. Meta description for each user's personal page “torzka's personal music profile at Last.fm. torzka's top artists include The Smashing Pumpkins, Saïan Supa Crew, My Chemical Romance, Ben Harper & The Innocent Criminals, Kelis. Get your own music profile at Last.fm, the world's largest social music platform." It includes information related to user's favourite artists. [...]

[...] this website is basically not a commercial website. Still, Last.fm has more ways to make financial benefits via its users considering the huge traffic generated: Last.fm sells Google advertising spaces that appear randomly on songs and album pages. - Last.fm offers paid accounts, costing 1.50 or ¥350 per month. Some of the extra features that paid users receive are no advertisements, more radio options (custom radio stations for a user and loved tracks radio), the ability to view recent visitors to one's own profile page and beta testing. [...]

[...] General Conclusion Last.fm is, as it calls itself, revolutionary. The website fulfils successfully its role of being the world's greatest music community, and constantly improves with new features. Attention on this website is mostly made by word-of-mouth. More than 15 million unique active users per month, representing over 200 countries and 5.5 million registered songs make last.fm one of the biggest music database, without a predetermined commercial purpose. And as last.fm's philosophy is to “build what the user wants”, it can not miss its success. [...]

[...] Learn more about Old Man at Last.fm, the world's largest social music platform." Not only the song itself, but a beta searcher will also have the probability to hit the page while searching similar artists or same music genre. My personal experience can confirm that when typing artist and song title on Google, last.fm will always or almost always appear in the first result page. Technical Aspects Webxact tool Last.fm webpage has a quick loading time: 00:00:39 on 56.6 connection for 271.72 kB and I have experienced only one 5-minutes shutdown within a year. [...]

[...] Objective of this site is to become the biggest music database completed by all users and developing communities for sharing musical taste. Last.fm was founded in 2002 by Felix Miller, Martin Stiksel, Michael Breidenbruecker and Thomas Willomitzer, all from Austria and Germany, as an internet radio station and music community site, using similar music profiles to generate dynamic playlists. The 'love' and 'ban' buttons allowed users to gradually customize their profiles. Last.fm won the Europrix 2002 and was nominated for the Prix Ars Electronica in 2003, before merging 2005 with Audioscrobbler.net's system, which is “system is a database that tracks listening habits and does wonderful things with statistics. [...]