Last.fm's software downloads onto a user's computer as a plug-in in their music player. As shown here on Windows Media player, the plug-in is considered a background device. This is interesting because it isn't as if the plug-in is actively asking for input from the user/listener. Rather, it sits quitely in the background "recording" all of the music player's output. Last.fm has termed this as "scrobbling." Scrobbling is the software in essence recording all the information coming from the music player. 
As the music player is being used to play a song, a side dialog box from Last.fm can be opened by the user on their computer. This dialog box is the user's direct link with Last.fm's site, without even being logged in directly through a webpage. The dialog box displays not only the song and artist being currently played by the user, but also gives a biographical history of the artist. It displays tags of the song, similar artists, and fellow listeners. It also allows the user the ability to "love" certain tracks. This "loved" feature seems to correspond directly to the Last.fm's ability to recommend artists based on a user's listening habits.
The dialog box corresponds directly the the user's own personalized radio created by Last.fm and the user. The user can play a variety of "radio stations" developed by the user's listening habits. "My Recommendations," "My Radio Station," "My Loved Tracks," and "My Neighborhood," are all based on Last.fm's analysis of the user's music habits. All of the information submitted by the user and "scrobbled" by the software is aggregated and analyzed, and then turned into a radio station the user can listen to at any time that is created and designed for the user personally.
So what?
ReplyDeleteThis is really good and detailed (which is what I was complaining about in the prior posts -- a certain lack of concrete detail), but I don't see a sense developed of why this is important.
The last sentence seems to have clues that you could expand on -- that it's through the "scrobbling" tool that Last.fm delivers a "personal" experience. Other sites do similar things, esp. Amazon with their personalized recommendations. The question is: why is this significant from a rhetorical point of view? How does this effect the way we think of ourselves, or our music?