First, the number of people registered with Last.fm is about 1/3 of the just the paying subscribers of spotify and certainly the number of active users of last.fm is just a small fraction of the registrants. And the number of additional users that Spotify claims have been added in the only last two years is also 3 times the number of registered last.fmers. So there is that vast difference.
Second, you are right that not many people care much about how many people listen to Taylor Swift everyday (except Taylor Swift), but what Spotify has done is take that listener data and use it to massage other data - data mine - to provide information that others do care very much about. This is especially true for Spotify’s non-premium users as they can then sell narrowly directed ads. Last.fm;'s owners haven’t done much - if anything - with their data.
And yet that is not valuable at all according to Spotifys earnings. My point was not that Spotify doesn’t collect the data, they do. It’s that the data isn’t valuable to sell to third parties, it’s only true value is to the service itself. The reason Spotify has the best algorithm in the game is because of its vast 420 million users.
The actual ad part of their business is really poor, over half the user’s they have are being served with these ads and Spotify is selling that data for only 12% of revenue.
I mention last.fm not from a number of users perspective but from a profitability standpoint. They barely make enough to continue operating and the core reason for that is because most people don’t pay for the service and their user data isn’t valuable.
This is actually interesting. Do you know this for a fact? I was more convinced by the argument of @ipeverywhere but would be interested on your insight. I have no idea what kind of data can be sold and whether there is a market for this kind of data.
As someone who doesn’t work for Spotify, I can’t say anything is a fact.
That being said, it is true that most of spotifys users don’t pay for the service and their ad based revenue only brings in 12% of their revenue.
From my perspective, where user data becomes really valuable is when it isn’t just one element.
Google and Facebook make so much money out of their users because they track them across multiple places with lots of different kinds of data points.
Google knows how you think (search), where you go (maps), what you do on your phone (android), what you listen to (YouTube music / YouTube), what you spend your money on (Gmail, wallet) etc.
All of that makes an incredibly personal, hyper specific and detailed profile. To an advertiser or whoever else, that is incredibly valuable. You can target EXACTLY the kind of person you want.
Realistically, Spotify only has what you do in the app and what you listen to. That is a fraction of what Google and other big players can provide. The only potential customers are labels and low spending advertiser’s (people who can’t afford to run targeted campaigns).
That is to me why Spotify isn’t focused on ads and why they don’t make money that way.
The vast quantity of user data does make their service incredibly sticky though. Everyone laments on the fact that no one has recommendations like Spotify and people are very reluctant to switch. Spotify actually touts the lowest churn of any music service (*according to them). I can see why when they use all of this data to build insightful music recommendations.
People need to use their brains for a hot second and stop blathering on about integrating Apple etc. Bottom line: Apple only want to stay within their ecosystem; Spotify same and don’t need a small player like Roon, and Amazon will only play with other companies that accept Alexa functionality (like Sonos) and I can’t imagine how that would work with Roon, and Bandcamp is a music store, not a music streaming service. For the small players though, it seems like it would be a win-win to integrate with Roon.
I love Wikipedia and donate handsomely every year.
I never really understood what last.fm is or what it does/provides although I do have an account that I remember linking to iTunes or something about 15 or so years ago. What’s so good about last.fm and what does it do?
Same here for Wikipedia and if I forget to donate I am quickly shamed into it (though I am currently on long streak of donations).
Last.fm is a great cross platform tool for capturing all your music listening and giving you access to the information in charting and graphical form, great for nerds like me
So you get monthly reporting, early reporting etc when you pay for Pro.
A couple of examples below, not for everyone, but I love that level of information over about 16 years
Also Roon already has an internal scrobbling option, as far as I know:
Most users subscribe to Last.fm Pro, because it enables editing your past scrobbles in your library and also future scrobbles of the same songs from different sources, mostly streaming sites like Spotify etc.
@Michael_Harris is referring to the graphical listening reports which offer more statistical infos than the standard library viewing options and are all free while listening reports are only free for the current version of Last.week and Last.year. The listening report for 2022 will be published in the first week of 2023, by the way, unlike Spotify Wrapped or similar yearly overviews of other streaming sites.
Having experienced the Tesla Apple Music integration for the first time this week, you were so right. It’s awful. If that’s what Apple expect Roon to deal with Roon users are better off without it! The Tesla Tidal integration is way better.
AceRimmer
(Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast!)
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And it’s probably a good job I’m not a gambling man…lol.
As it appears that Deezer is off the table…not just with Roon but with anyone who had been working on integration with them.
Oh well….
I hoped it would be something like native DSD. I’m not much into classical music but they have some really nice jazz stuff and the DSD recordings are really high quality.
