The recommendations engine used them but it's main strength was it was primarily based on collaborative filtering (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last.fm).

Essentially if people who listen to many of the same artists/tracks as I do have discovered other things I have not, then those unseen artists/tracks become candidate recommendations.

It worked as well as it did because they had a user base of music fans with a wide variety of tastes. CBS ran them into trouble when they upset those fans by breaking the radio and by being perceived as too close to the RIAA.

The will need to get the numbers up, but I'm hoping them being independent again is a good sign.

> The will need to get the numbers up, but I'm hoping them being independent again is a good sign.

The problem will be recovering from algorithmic poisoning from folks just scrobbling from spotify