While doubling its US traffic in one year

Apr 20, 2010 13:43 GMT  ·  By

Last.fm is one of the most known and long-lasting online music services and, despite seemingly upstaged by younger competitors like Spotify and others, it's proving as popular as ever. Technically, Spotify is a music-streaming service, while Last.fm touts its recommendation features, so the two don’t compete on paper.

Last.fm is at somewhat of a crossroads these days, as it finds itself soul-searching, trying to figure out what exactly Last.fm is to its users and what it tries to accomplish. The latest answer seems to be going back to its roots, as it has recently dropped all on-demand streaming services in favor of third-party services like the aforementioned Spotify.

That doesn't phase its trusty users, which keep on scrobbling. Now, Last.fm is announcing that it has managed to get its hands on the 40 billionth scrobble. In its eighth year of existence, people have info about the songs they listen to uploaded 40 billion times. What’s more, the service is saying it has doubled its US traffic in the past year. Last.fm has made some big moves in the US after being acquired by CBS.

Last.fm started out as two separate services. On the one hand, there was the Audioscrobbler software and service that enabled users to send info about the songs they listened to the most. This would provide them with nice stats, weekly charts, favorite artists, and so on. Separetly, there was Last.fm, an online radio station that enabled users to customize their streams based on musical preferences.

Over time, profiles and better personalized radio stations were added, becoming a very important part of the experience. But the core of Last.fm are still the scrobbles. In fact, Last.fm plans to build on this further and has started adding online services like Spotify and Vevo to the list of 'things that scrobble.'