Little Pawns

Introductory post

About Last.fm

Last.fm is a music recommendation service. You use Last.fm by signing up and downloading The Scrobbler, which helps you discover more music based on the songs you play.

 

What’s Scrobbling?

A scrobble is a little note The Scrobbler sends to Last.fm to let them know what song you’re playing.

Scrobbling helps tell Last.fm and you what songs you play most often, which songs you like the most, how much you’ve played an artist over a certain amount of time, which of your friends have similar tastes… all kinds of stuff. By focusing on the music you already play Last.fm can help you discover more music.

 

What you get

Scrobbles mean that Last.fm can deliver personalised recommendations for every single Last.fm listener, every single day. They then compare what you play to the scrobbles of millions of listeners around the world, meaning your recommendations are the result of more than 43 billion scrobbles and counting.

There’s plenty more you can do with Last.fm too. By getting involved in the community you can tag tracks, join discussions, learn what’s hot and find new ways of uncovering the secrets of your listening history.

 

Get started

Join today and discover more music, with Last.fm.

 

(source About Last.fm )

 

Why bother?

There’s a whole community of music-lovers on Last.fm.  You can do stuff like get personal recommendations for vids and songs/artists, tweet what you’re listening to/like, join communities, see what your listening habits are – who you like, who you listen to most, what your friends like to listen to, who you’re compatible with musically…  I’ll leave you to discover that for yourself (or not!).  Also, Last.fm is international (Pandora is US only), which gives Kris more exposure world-wide!

 

The focus of this guide is to help us do the stuff that supports Kris and increases his presence online.

 

Once you’ve joined Last.fm & downloaded the scrobbler, each track you play on your computer or mp3 player is collected in the Last.fm database & it gets added to all sorts of lists.  People can search by popular artists, who’s being played right now, who was popular last week, similar artists etc.  And if you tag your tracks (we'll explain this in a future task), they can search by a tag as well.

 

Last.fm publishes a list of the Top 40 scrobbled artists every year based purely on how many times the artist is played.  They also publish a Top 1000 by tag, so that you can see who was popular in a particular genre.

 

Last.fm also gives artists their own profile page.  Kris’s page is here.  You can see that along the left side of the column there are tabs for Biography, Pictures, Videos, Albums, Tracks, Events, News, Charts, Similar Artists, Tags, Listeners, Journal, and Groups.  These are all in the form of a wiki and can be updated by any user at any time – so we can use them to promote Kris ourselves.  Obviously there are guidelines and I’m not suggesting we take over the pages and do anything we like – but there are a couple of things we can do to add to what’s already there.  For example:

 

  • Upload your pictures of Kris
  • Upload your concert videos for live tracks
  • Make sure you tag the Kris tracks you have scrobbled, as well as Kris himself
  • RSVP to say you are attending a concert “event”
  • Join Kris-related groups.

 

Tasks

ETA:  All the tasks have been posted now, so you can just dive right in and do the project at your own pace!  I'm still tracking the posts, so if you do have a question, then do post it & I'll answer :D  The best place to start is the first task...

We’ll be posting tasks on a regular basis, so that you can get into Last.fm slowly.  We’ll be online at various times to answer your questions in the forum discussions & to help you get around.  Just so you know Dorothy (dy7764) is in the US and I'm (Amanda - pomegranate02) in Australia, and we'll both be answering questions about the tasks.  Feel free to help each other out & talk about stuff you discover as you go too.

 

Even if you’re already using Last.fm, please read all of “Set and forget”, as well as the section on “Tagging”.  I’ve been on Last.fm for five years and I learnt some new things by writing this guide…  We want every scrobble to count.

 

Ready?  Check out the first task in this category & have fun :-)

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Kathy T on February 16, 2011 at 5:00am

Hi everybody - I'm pretty much a Last.fm newbie, but I've had an account and have been scrobbling for awhile. If you check out my profile there - (kt_cle, just like on twitter), you'll see an embarrassing number of Kris spins. I kind of doubt the accuracy of those counts, but Kris's music is pretty prominent on the play list I fall asleep to every night, so I guess you never know.  

 

I need some last.fm friends - so friend me!

Permalink Reply by pomegranate02 on February 16, 2011 at 2:19pm

We love newbies :-)

 

I'm off to friend you, I'm korestemenos over at Last.fm.

Permalink Reply by Callie on February 16, 2011 at 9:32am
Hey Guys -- I guess it's time to dust off my Last.fm account! I'm Calledecalla over there. I'll be making sure to Scrobble my Kris plays from now on! :)
Permalink Reply by pomegranate02 on February 16, 2011 at 2:17pm

Yay!  *hands you a duster*

 

I'm off to friend you, I'm korestemenos there.

Permalink Reply by LaNette on February 17, 2011 at 2:35pm

Hi! I have been on last.fm since May - and I was shocked to see that I had listened to Kris songs more than 4,000 times since then. The next artist in my library doesn't even get to 200. I exercise (almost daily) to Kris' album. It goes perfectly to Leslie Sansone's 4 fast mile walking DVD. I used to play his CD but since I discovered last.fm, I've started playing his album using speakers on my iPod so that it will count in the scrobbling. Another thing I do is when I'm working at my computer, which is very frequently, I start playing an iTunes playlist of Kris' music from AI, his album, and performance MP3s I've downloaded. I just turn the volume down and let it play if I need to concentrate on what I'm writing and I think it will distract me.

 

I'm very excited about this emphasis on last.fm because it is something positive that all of us can do. I'm an American living in Africa for the moment, so I subscribed to last.fm. Since I can't really request Kris' songs on American radio, this makes me feel part of the effort. I'm Masieta71 there, so feel free to friend me.

Permalink Reply by LaNette on February 17, 2011 at 2:50pm
I've checked some of your profiles... okay... my 4,000 isn't that many compared to some of you! Great!
Permalink Reply by Allyson on February 22, 2011 at 8:34am
Well, if we're all sharing our last.fm handles, I'm vanya_elda over there. :D
Permalink Reply by Michelle on February 22, 2011 at 9:49am
Hi everyone -- I got set up at last.fm and will be sending out friend requests. I'm seeyoufalling.
Permalink Reply by Linda Parish on February 23, 2011 at 6:43am
HI, I have a question.  Do you need to set up on each computer that you use?  I have a Dell and also a Mac, plus the computer at work.  Do you know if it will work on my Verizon Droid?  Can't wait to get started on this to get Kris more exposure to the world.  He is such an awesome singer/songwriter/musician and fantastic person.
Permalink Reply by Kathy T on February 23, 2011 at 6:46am

Hi Linda!

 

You should download the scrobbler to any computers you use to listen to music. In each case, you can connect it to your last.fm account, so all your plays will accumulate there. I'm an iPhone girl, so I can't speak to Droid apps off the top of my head, but I'm sure others know things :D  Happy scrobbling!

Permalink Reply by Linda Parish on February 23, 2011 at 6:55am

Thanks. Can't wait to get started!

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