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bool3max an hour ago

For me last.fm's value lies in the community aspect: you can leave a comment on any artist, album, or individual track's page. There's not a single other place on the internet where I can go to to see what the people think of a song I'm listening to at any given moment (apart from perhaps YouTube, but we all know what the comments there are like - last.fm attracts a more sophisticated crowd by nature).

Unfortunately they have recently taken a rather drastic step towards undermining this community aspect of the site by gating the comment (or "shout", as they call it) box behind a "SEE WHAT OTHERS ARE SAYING BUTTON". Previously the top 5-10 comments would by default be visible on every artist/album/track page, but now there's an extra level of indirection you've go to go through to see or post comments. The move was never justified despite the vocal community's outrage on their forums [1], but I suspect it's got something to do with the site's poor performance, as previously comments failed to load about 30% of the time. Strange, yeah.

I've cancelled my Pro subscription a while ago as a result, but I'm excited to see what their independence from Paramount will bring.

[1]: https://support.last.fm/t/artist-shoutbox/117534

ilikegreen 26 minutes ago | parent [-]

I think RateYourMusic also allows for commenting pretty much on everything (and it also extends to film and, IIRC, videogames).

It might not be as friendly as last.fm on the surface, but it is surely richer in content, and more diverse. It's a gem, and I hope Sonemnic (?) doesn't drive it to the ground.