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Music Media Television The Internet

Last.fm Plans Custom Music Video Channels 53

Posted by kdawson from the gotta-install-microwave-ovens dept.
Corey writes "CNet's Crave is reporting that the popular Web 2.0 music site Last.fm is planning to launch a video-on-demand service that dynamically creates a custom video channel for users in the same way it currently does with music. Read/Write Web also cites a recent press release quoting directors at Last.fm as saying they plan to host every music video ever created. This could well turn out to be the MTV of Web 2.0."
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Last.fm Plans Custom Music Video Channels More

Last.fm Plans Custom Music Video Channels

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  • That's nice (Score:5, Funny)

    by n6kuy ( 172098 ) on Thursday May 10, 2007 @12:30PM (#19069405)
    'Specially since MTV doesn't broadcast music videos any more.

  • Oh, dear.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rob T Firefly ( 844560 ) on Thursday May 10, 2007 @12:31PM (#19069427) Homepage Journal

    This could well turn out to be the MTV of Web 2.0.
    So it'll be full of reality shows, ringtone ads, army recruitment propaganda, and every so often a music video?
  • MOG TV already took the title of MTV for Web 2.0: http://mog.com/tv [mog.com]

  • Finally (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Tribbin ( 565963 ) on Thursday May 10, 2007 @12:49PM (#19069789) Homepage
    Hope this will for me block the overkill of gangsters/pimps with half-naked ladies that 80% of the MTV/TMF clips show the last couple of years.

    Maybe the music channels on TV will discover that this is NOT what most people like too see.

    • Re:Finally (Score:4, Insightful)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Thursday May 10, 2007 @01:57PM (#19071153) Homepage Journal

      Maybe the music channels on TV will discover that this is NOT what most people like too see.

      TV on what planet?

      Sex and Violence are the biggest sellers...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Tribbin ( 565963 )
        There is only a minor group that sits behind their TV and watches these clips all day long.

        It's a safe bet because if suddenly a channel desides to have 'only' 40% of the clips gangster/nude then they won't attract a new group but their current audience looks for a different channel which better matches their 'lifestyle' they want.

  • Licensing... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by u-bend ( 1095729 )
    Does this somehow bypass the abominable licensing dilemma that the RIAA has imposed on online radio? [capwiz.com]
  • clearly they mean "Music Television" when it showed music videos, like say in 1985. They're not talking about the post-real-world "MTV" that goes out of its way to show as little music as possible.

  • The server already struggles (Score:5, Informative)

    by digitig ( 1056110 ) on Thursday May 10, 2007 @12:51PM (#19069823)
    I still get server overload errors on Last.fm (just had one, in fact), and that's with just audio (plus track listing data, of course). They'll need a big investment in infrastructure to serve up video reliably.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Arkaic ( 784460 )
      Agreed. I have always have problems with the streaming audio from Last FM. Basically they shrugged it off as something they couldn't control, since they are based out of the UK. Other services such as Sky FM or Sonoma, have been much more reliable for audio streams.
      • Do you have a subscription? Because they feel free to throttle you otherwise (it's in their FAQ). I never had a problem when I was a subscriber.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by British ( 51765 )
      The last time I tried last.fm's audio player app, I got nowhere fast. It simply didn't work, at all. I hope that's been improved. The interface is awful and there's not a simple "play some music, dammit!" button.

  • not bad (Score:4, Informative)

    by spentmiles ( 917302 ) on Thursday May 10, 2007 @12:52PM (#19069847)
    I was just looking for an internet radio site... I'm working from home today and I couldn't find the power cord to the old portable radio. last.fm seems cool -- based on my first try. When you first login, it asks you for what band you're interested in listening to. I figured I'd give it a challenge, so I tried Mr. Bungle. A decent song came right up (Backstrokin) and it also gave me some decent suggestions for related bands -- some I hadn't heard of. The next song is right on key, so I'll keep listening for a while.
  • In the meantime (whilst we figure out how the hell to get every video known to man ;) you can check out the mashup:

    http://www.lasttv.net/ [lasttv.net]

    which is pretty awesome.

  • Last.fm should focus on its core functions first (Score:3, Informative)

    by moore.dustin ( 942289 ) on Thursday May 10, 2007 @12:54PM (#19069875) Homepage
    They have a horrible system for recommending similar music to users. They need to adopt the Music Genome Project [pandora.com] from Pandora [pandora.com] or something similar that they can create with their large and pretty active user base.

    I use last.fm all the time and I love it, but not for what it is billed for. I am able to track my listening, which is cool because, dude numbers.... right? Also they have information on artists a click away from my page along with a calendar for events coming to my area. They use their database well in many ways, but they have yet to come up with a system for recommending new music that is good. Currently, it boils down to, if you like Artist A and these other 1000 people like Artist A, then you must like some of the other stuff they like. Then the bring in tags and produce some list that is bogus. Given they make money from selling CD's and getting a cut, you would think a large focus would be put on a system where people would actually find stuff they like when searching for similar sounding stuff.

    As for the music videos - I do not care to much for the idea, but I see the draw for others. They have improved their site a great deal over the last few years and it shows no sign of slowing down, which is good. I just wish they would revisit the core elements of the site for a change and give us a system that works... it is, after all, what the site was meant to be about in the first place.

    • Check out allmusic (Score:2, Informative)

      by pretygrrl ( 465212 )
      They have an excellent database, very extensive, and host lots of videos (certainly I haven't been able to think of one that don't have yet)
      I think they are major label, too, so probably have worked out whatever licensing kinks there may be.
      Point is, this is not a newsworthy item - lots of similar sites exist and have existed for a while.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Pope ( 17780 )
        Don't check out Allmusic :)

        They took their site from a lightweight and very usable site to a multi-click hard-templated POS designed mainly to sell banner impressions. You used to able to go to the main page for a band and see their entire 'story' in one shot without having to click on a "read more..." link, etc. Hell, even go to a Discography page, every row in the table lights up on rollover, but there's no clear indication what's a link and what isn't. I mean half the times their cross-links to o
    • I agree that their algos aren't perfect (unless you love Radiohead and other "indie" bands), but doing it Pandora-style is not scalable. Pandora have people labeling everything by hand. Need to change the labeling system? Add a lable? Have fun re-listening to everything.
    • yeah, 'Pandora' only in the US= what say 5% of the world?

    • As much as I appreciate Pandora's ambitions, their recommendation system is far from ideal. I can only tolerate Pandora radio when I'm in a real funk where I don't want to listen to anything in my collection, and even then, it never takes long for the database to actually offend me with its poor recommendations. The flaws come up more in some genres than others; one of my biggest gripes is that a lot of the harder music doesn't seem to be labelled and categorized by anyone who actually is a fan of hard rock

    • Re:Last.fm should focus on its core functions firs (Score:4, Informative)

      by tmarthal ( 998456 ) on Thursday May 10, 2007 @03:29PM (#19072871) Homepage

      I just wish they would revisit the core elements of the site for a change and give us a system that works...


      Maybe you just don't get the core elements of the site, but it has always been a social network site based on similar music tastes. The Pandora project is an interesting idea in that it algorithmically determines music similarity (not hand coded like a poster above mentioned(?)) based on attributes such as tempo, etc. Last.fm, on the other hand, rates similarity based on what people are listening to. Meaning, Kelly Clarkson and The Killers (for example) do not have any musical attributes in common, but sure as shit the same people that listen to one, listen to the other. It breaks down with popular media because lots of different listener types will listen to the new rap/dance song, but again as someone said above, it works for things not so much in the popular culture (Ska, Screamo, Reggae, House, Funk, etc.).

      The social network has been, and always will be, thier core element. Thier recommendation system is as good as the people listening to the music.
    • I don't mind their recommendation system so much, it's simple and it works fine. If you don't like something, you can just skip it or ban it. What I really want is a "ban everything by this band" button. I can't count the number of the times I've gone "Why are you playing me [insert crappy band]?!? I already banned 5 of their songs!" The next step would be to include a "set a horde of killer bees on this band" button for whenever Panic! At The Disco comes up...
    • I don't know. Pandora seems to me to be very good at serving up similar kinds of music, but there's no guarantee or control over whether I'll like it or not. Which is why I mostly listen to real radio.

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday May 10, 2007 @01:14PM (#19070251)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I thought that goal looked familiar. Youtube was aiming for the same thing. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060816-7521 .html [arstechnica.com]
  • I like imeem. has quality mp3 songs. Way better than Itunes previews.
  • ZZzzzzz....Second Life...Zzzzzz....

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