Forum » Feedback and Ideas

full functionality world-wide for subscribers after March 30?

 
    • a dit :...
    • Utilisateur
    • 26 mars 2009, 15h36m

    full functionality world-wide for subscribers after March 30?

    hi

    with the coming subscription scheme i wonder whether that means that the full functionality of last.fm will finally be available world-wide.

    in particular, as a resident of The Netherlands, will i be able to use all the features of last.fm on Sonos and Android that were only available to users in the privileged countries (US, UK, D), like listening to the last.fm radio on these systems and listen to specific tracks? that would be nice and make perfect sense.

    can somebody confirm that this will be the case?

    thanks
    André

    • Russ a dit :...
    • Alumni
    • 26 mars 2009, 16h08m
    Unfortunately not. The country restrictions on these services are part of the contract we have with the device providers, and so these contracts would need to be re-negotiated for that to be improved.

    • s_nijland a dit :...
    • Utilisateur
    • 26 mars 2009, 16h12m
    Hi Ross,

    Has Last FM thought about an option for a free 'non-commerical / independent artist' (world wide) radio? So free uploaded music from artists that do not claim royalties that can be listened to for free?

    Thanks

    because we separate it ripples our reflection... in rainbows
    • empsy a dit :...
    • Utilisateur
    • 26 mars 2009, 16h24m
    Yes, exactly, thats something we really need.. a "non commercial / independent" last.fm, what happened to those indepent people in last.fm? did you broke with them or what?

    magic...
    • Russ a dit :...
    • Alumni
    • 26 mars 2009, 16h25m
    s_nijland said:
    Has Last FM thought about an option for a free 'non-commerical / independent artist' (world wide) radio? So free uploaded music from artists that do not claim royalties that can be listened to for free?


    I think this is a great idea, but we're not going to implement this (at least to start with) because royalty-free music constitutes such a small percentage of our catalogue. Hopefully we will have this functionality soon though :).

    • a dit :...
    • Utilisateur
    • 26 mars 2009, 16h29m
    hi Russ

    thanks for the explanation. this is really bad news, though :-(

    in fact, this means that non-US/UK/D residents need to pay (more) for less features!

    regards
    André

    • adamzZz a dit :...
    • Utilisateur
    • 26 mars 2009, 16h33m
    Russ, I need to ask about one thing. There are many tracks from Warner and its labels that are somehow playing in all of the Last.fm radios. Wouldn't it be a good idea to mark them as 'playable only in radios' - for example with a grey 'play' button?

    According to this article: http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/news.php?id=32507 - are new releases from Warner going to be added to catalogue?

    • a dit :...
    • Utilisateur
    • 26 mars 2009, 16h59m
    It's amazing that the music industry tend to kill pretty much every advance in technology.

    Different rules for different countries in Europe will be troublesome though. If the Germans and the Bristish can use the service for free then there is no reason why the French and the Danish shouldn't. Expect trouble, last.fm...research "iTunes"...

    • s_nijland a dit :...
    • Utilisateur
    • 26 mars 2009, 17h06m
    Russ said:
    s_nijland said:
    Has Last FM thought about an option for a free 'non-commerical / independent artist' (world wide) radio? So free uploaded music from artists that do not claim royalties that can be listened to for free?


    I think this is a great idea, but we're not going to implement this (at least to start with) because royalty-free music constitutes such a small percentage of our catalogue. Hopefully we will have this functionality soon though :).


    Thanks for the answer! good to know it at least has been looked into (even better to know it might some day be added)

    because we separate it ripples our reflection... in rainbows
    • Russ a dit :...
    • Alumni
    • 26 mars 2009, 17h16m
    adamzZz said:
    Russ, I need to ask about one thing. There are many tracks from Warner and its labels that are somehow playing in all of the Last.fm radios. Wouldn't it be a good idea to mark them as 'playable only in radios' - for example with a grey 'play' button?


    We're aware of this request, but it's difficult to implement in a way which doesn't look confusing to new users.

    According to this article: http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/news.php?id=32507 - are new releases from Warner going to be added to catalogue?

    That story is back from the dead - it dates from May 2008, which is when our contract with Warner expired, and someone misread the date and republished it.

    • adamzZz a dit :...
    • Utilisateur
    • 26 mars 2009, 18h16m
    We're aware of this request, but it's difficult to implement in a way which doesn't look confusing to new users.
    Well, for me and (probably) most of the users is more difficult to recognize which track may be played and which is unplayable. Please, try to make a solution for this, it's confusing.

    • HodgeStar a dit :...
    • Utilisateur
    • 26 mars 2009, 18h51m
    Russ said:
    adamzZz said:
    Russ, I need to ask about one thing. There are many tracks from Warner and its labels that are somehow playing in all of the Last.fm radios. Wouldn't it be a good idea to mark them as 'playable only in radios' - for example with a grey 'play' button?

    We're aware of this request, but it's difficult to implement in a way which doesn't look confusing to new users.


    What should be so confusing about the meaning of these two icons:

    tracks with preview
    tracks on the radio

    If you want new users to subscribe for the radio features you should show them what you have to offer. And while you are on it, make the difference of FOD and FLP clear again. Show the world that you have a radio service worth subscribing to and at the same time a broad platform for "free non-commerical / independent artist".

    Does anyone remember the yellow and blue triangles? You replaced them in the course of Free The Music with the argumentation:

    Matthew Ogle:
    we’re easing away from the concepts of preview / full track / full length preview / etc etc etc.

    Basically, we want “I click play and the full track plays to me, for free” to become the defacto standard Last.fm experience. You click play and it works — you shouldn’t have to understand our internal licensing model and technical infrastructure, that’s our job. Yours is listening to awesome music! ;)

    (I appreciate the current design isn’t all the way there yet, but that’s where we’re heading and hopefully explains it a bit.)

    i guess this approach is history and part of the confusion now.

    • adamzZz a dit :...
    • Utilisateur
    • 26 mars 2009, 19h01m
    I made a little rendez-vous with photoshop:

    - playable track with preview
    - radio only

    Of course the 'radio only' button should have looked much better, but I'm not into graphics much ;).

    • Kerensky97 a dit :...
    • Modérateur
    • 26 mars 2009, 21h47m
    How about the words "Radio Only" on top of each other, written very small?

    People keep suggesting yet another icon to confuse people; just say what it is and avoid the problem. When stacked on top of each other the words don't take much more length than an icon and it's not like last.fm is lacking in white space to fill up.

    All comments reflect the views of the poster and not of last.fm or it's management.

    • Babs_05 a dit :...
    • Forum Moderator
    • 26 mars 2009, 22h39m
    The words "radio only" sounds good to me.

    If you're selling subscriptions on the basis people can only listen to radios this way, I would say it's essential to work on a solution for these seemingly unavailable tracks.

    • Russ a dit :...
    • Alumni
    • 27 mars 2009, 1h20m
    Again, this is not my choice, this is the choice of our (excellent) UI designers. We have to take into account completely new users as well as established users, and so we need to design the UI accordingly.

    All I can say is that we hear you :).

    • HodgeStar a dit :...
    • Utilisateur
    • 27 mars 2009, 1h51m
    Russ said:
    All I can say is that we hear you :).
    (excellent)! thanks ;)

    • Charbax a dit :...
    • Utilisateur
    • 27 mars 2009, 4h45m

    But the 3€ per month..

    That money should be enough to convince a bunch of music rights holders to unlock full track preview and even downloads?

    As long as they can know that they get significant access to that money based on popularity and quality rated by the paying international users?

    Can you not provide a "Allow Full Track Preview only to Subscribers" and "All Track Downloads on to Subscribers" features and that the artists or rights holders can see a significant revenue from activating those features only to International subscribers?

  • Well, that's it then, seems like I will have to go and buy the music I want to listen to, rather than pay 3 euros per month for playing (not so) randomly chosen tracks.

    • Babs_05 a dit :...
    • Forum Moderator
    • 27 mars 2009, 13h45m
    killer041178 said:
    Well, that's it then, seems like I will have to go and buy the music I want to listen to, rather than pay 3 euros per month for playing (not so) randomly chosen tracks.
    and then you'll return because there's a world of difference between £100s a year on CDs and streaming them for here for ... ahem...

  • Babs_05 said:
    killer041178 said:
    Well, that's it then, seems like I will have to go and buy the music I want to listen to, rather than pay 3 euros per month for playing (not so) randomly chosen tracks.
    and then you'll return because there's a world of difference between £100s a year on CDs and streaming them for here for ... ahem...


    Probably :)
    I just hope they'll change their mind when they see that all the people they had hoped would stay are no longer around...

    • Babs_05 a dit :...
    • Forum Moderator
    • 27 mars 2009, 14h12m
    We haven't had time to digest the news and absorb the change. We've been given next to no notice. So if they've lost people because of that, tough, they should have thought it through. It's not like it's rocket science or anything. It should have been no less than 14 days if it was really that urgent, but more like 3 months minimum. Ideally a year.

    Everyone who has left is perfectly within their rights. It's an awful shame they're going to lose their charts etc that they spent so much time creating. And all because this hasn't been handled properly.

    • Pyrion a dit :...
    • Utilisateur
    • 27 mars 2009, 14h17m
    Babs_05 said:
    We haven't had time to digest the news and absorb the change. We've been given next to no notice.


    Get used to it. In a recession approaching a depression, there's going to be a lot of snap decisions lacking warning cuz nobody has time to warn of impending doom when, you know, it's impending.

    • akrde a dit :...
    • Abonné
    • 28 mars 2009, 11h21m
    Russ said:
    Again, this is not my choice, this is the choice of our (excellent) UI designers. We have to take into account completely new users as well as established users, and so we need to design the UI accordingly.

    All I can say is that we hear you :).


    You hear us? Great! :-))

    But you are ignoring our suggestions and the need for showing us EVERY radio-streamable track! BAD! :-((

    • Russ a dit :...
    • Alumni
    • 28 mars 2009, 12h02m
    akrde said:
    Russ said:
    Again, this is not my choice, this is the choice of our (excellent) UI designers. We have to take into account completely new users as well as established users, and so we need to design the UI accordingly.

    All I can say is that we hear you :).


    You hear us? Great! :-))

    But you are ignoring our suggestions and the need for showing us EVERY radio-streamable track! BAD! :-((


    No, we're not ignoring you. We know about that thread (I posted in it), and we're taking it into account.

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