Last.FM Music Widget – A Review

Last.FM is a music recommendation service that draws on implicit music listening data collected by its iScrobbler download. The meta data of music listened to by Last.FM members on their computers is uploaded to Last.FM via iScrobbler, which enables Last.FM’s core services of creating custom music stations, facilitating introductions between “musical neighbors,” and recommending bands.

The Last.FM Widget – called Last.FM Music Charts by the site – is a visual representation of the music data collected for each user via the iScrobbler upload. In other words, Last.FM charts what you’re listening to, and allows you to add these charts to your blog, social network profile, or personal Web site.

At its simplest level, the Last.FM music widget allows Last.FM members to show off what they’re listening to during any given week, without actually having to do anything (once they’ve installed the widget).

Applications and Opportunity

With the explosion of digital music through iPod/iTunes and the explosion of customizable profile pages via social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, the Last.FM music widget has a huge potential market to work with. The implicit nature of the data associated with this widget is a significant advantage as well – unlike other music content widgets, the user doesn’t have to make any explicit choices about what bands or tracks to display. All the users have to do is what they were doing anyway – listen to music.

The Last.FM music widget plays directly to the vanity of music snobs. People who love music tend to wear their music listening habits like a badge of honor. Among connoisseurs, it’s a big deal to discover that next big act, or conversely, to consistently listen to stuff that nobody else has ever heard of. The Last.FM music widget is the perfect vehicle for music snobs to display how good their tastes are.

The biggest challenge that destination social media sites have is getting the word out about their service. Last.FM’s music widget allows its existing members to recruit new members, and perfectly conveys exactly what the site is – a personalized music player. This widget would seem to be a nice strategic tool for Last.FM to attract new users.

Configuration

It’s a little tricky to find the widgets section of Last.FM. I couldn’t find it on my user profile dashboard of controls, and clicking the “Charts” tab does not take you to the widgets section, even though Last.FM calls their widget “Last.FM Charts.” You need to click on the “Tools” tab to get things set up.

Once you find the right page, the process is very smooth, customizable, and elegant. You can configure your widget with bands or tracks, and with weekly or all-time data.

You can build your own design with a nifty chart builder tool, or you can choose from tens of template designs. Template designs are neatly laid out by popularity, editors’ picks, or recently added.

Interestingly, Last.FM widgets are generated as images on the Last.FM servers, and sporadically updated on the widget output pages. My guess is that this is to avoid heavy crunching of the Last.FM servers. I haven’t found the lack of a dynamic feed of data to be annoying however. Weekly updates are enough to allow the Last.FM widgets to portray what music you’re listening during an approximate time period.

One minor annoyance is that it’s a little difficult to tell in most cases which widget designs will fit in a sidebar, and which will only work in a wider area.

Testing

I was able to add the Last.FM music widget to Blogger, Typepad, and MySpace without a problem. Because it’s an image and not a script, this widget should work anywhere that allows html. As mentioned earlier, this widget does not provide dynamic data updates – in my experience the lag for updates has been about a week.

Editorial

I have not found a widget that I appreciate more than the Last.FM music widget. Its key strengths are its ability to portray something unique about the publisher, the fact that it’s fueled by implicit and not explicit data, and the almost universal desire of folks to share the music that they’re listening to.

The only possible knock that I can think of about this widget is that it’s a nice to have, not a need to have. It doesn’t provide any additional functionality to a Web page, like the Meebo Me widget, for example. If you fast forward two years to when every online business is pushing a widget of some kind, I can see adoption decisions being made along the lines of required vs. preferred. In this sort of a world, the content based Last.FM widget may lose out to a functionally based widget such IM or a shopping cart. By then however, I would expect the Last.FM widget to evolve to be an actual music player.

Clearly, the real hurdle for Last.FM is getting people to download its software. Once you do that, the adoption and enjoyment of its music widget is an absolute no-brainer.

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