Ever heard people talking about how fast time flies? I certainly have. My life's been ten times fuller of stuff compared to "most" other folks I meet, but at 26 years of age now I have really started to acknowledge time. My first twenty years of life felt like 40, but these past six have been like two years or so.
So, I'm not going into this because I'm experiencing a life crisis or whatever. No. It's because I just realized how long it's already been since LAST.FM changed their website's layout. Well above 1,5 years as of today, possibly even two years since the beta version was released. Anyway, guess what?! It's still shitty as fuck!
In the early summer of 2015 I did a post on this blog about my opinions on their new layout. It was not positive, and nor did a great majority of their users think it was a good change either. I don't really know what's going on at the LAST.FM HQ, but they certainly have not listened to their users/customers. The activity dropped noticably after the layout change. I mean, the site had been notably on a decline for several years up till 2015, hence why I suppose they did the layout change, but they kind of shot themselves in their foot with that one.
Except for a few old school die-hard scrobblers including myself still active on the site, it's completely died. There might be some minor activity going on if you head into Metallica's or Slayer's page, but it's still nothing compared to a few years ago. Anywhere else; any underground to minor to average metal band: their pages are dead.
You know, I really sincerely miss the early days of LAST.FM. I joined up in late 2007 and it was a great music community at that time. Lots of people scrobbling and interacting on the band's pages, the site's forums and whatnot. Great times. The layout was good as well. I spent most of my time online on LAST.FM because of all the fun it was back then. I guess it lasted to around 2011 or so. In 2012 I had a break from the site and when I returned in 2013, it was not quite as alive anymore.
As a dedicated user of theirs for ten years this year, I feel "cheated" by their current shitty layout. They killed what little community they had left on there. Whoever thought the current layout was a good idea should be fired asap. The fact that they scrapped the forum and personal aspects of your profile further shows what a stupid movie the makeover was. What did you think there, honestly?
What's even more odd, however, is why they proceeded with launching the layout when they got such a massive negative feedback on the beta and during the early period post-launch. As if this wasn't enough though, people also cancelled their subscribtions to their radio-stuff and deleted their accounts permanently just to show their disappointment. Not even the shoutbox trolls stayed. You know, all of this, I think it speaks for itself. LAST.FM just ignores it which is a real shame.
These days it honestly feels like I'm one of, like, five old users still hangin' around there...
Truth be told, I quite don't understand why I'm still hangin' on LAST.FM either. I'm not exactly hangin' around like I used to - obviously there's no use for it - but I look up my personal scrobbles and such.
You know, the saddest part about LAST.FM is how much potential they've still got but don't see. With Spotify and all those streaming services massively available and used out there today, they could have had more people joining up these days.
I personally believe there are a lot more people interacting with Spotify these days than there were people with local music files back in 2008. So maybe LAST.FM wouldn't get their own subscribers back, unless they join in and battle the market, but they could still achieve revenue from adds and whatnot. But now ... their site's just dead.
NO ONE LIKES THE CURRENT LAST.FM
OPEN YOUR EYES AND REALIZE
YOU LOST WHAT YOU ONCE HAD
BUT STILL YOU'RE TOO BLIND TO SEE IT YOURSELVES...
So... Why am I still using the service then? Old habits die hard, I guess. I invested so many years in scrobbling my music onto their site. It feels sad to just quit that because their layout sucks nowadays.
And then I guess there's some hope, somewhere, that someday someone will make LAST.FM great again.
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