I finally had a chance to dig deeply into the new, dramatically enhanced Last.fm over the weekend. Jumping past the superficial -- the much improved user interface, and various software glitches of the past -- this version of Last.fm is almost a perfect example of what I have been preaching about social architecture:

1. People Are The Living, Breathing, Beating Heart Of The Universe -- the social elements of social applications are central, and the domain elements (in this case music) come second.
   
2. Artifacts Bind Us Together and Define Us -- the social "gestures" that we leave behind in our online searching -- comments, ratings, tags, and so on -- weaves the fabric that binds us together, and through which we make sense of the world.
   
3. Social Interaction Is Bottom Up, And So Is Everything Else -- successful social applications -- like Last.fm -- work because their orientation is bottom-up throughout. People's fuzzy tags, group formation, and music preferences drive the overall experience, not a single, centralized taxonomy and unified top ten hit parade model. (Big aside: exactly what is lacking in all the current top 100 or 500 blog lists, by the way.)
   
4. Social Stuff Absorbs and Trumps Domain Stuff -- it is our collective perceptions of and enjoyment of music that animates the endless catalog of artists, albums, and tracks that form the natural domain model of recorded music. It is through social interaction that we can learn something about a new artist, or new music by an old favorite. We are not on our own, wandering through the stacks: our view of the world of music, in this case, is shaped and informed by others.

The New Last.fm

The core coolness of Last.fm -- the automatic creation of a personal, virtual neighborhood of people with shared musical tastes, whose musical libraries you can browse, all based on a plug-in that pulls the sequence of tracks played from your iTunes -- is still central in the new Last.fm. But this has been extended in some very important ways:

Tagging -- Last.fm now includes a generalized tagging capability, so as you roam through the library of music -- your own and others -- you can attach arbitrary tags to artists, albums, and tracks. Given a tag, like jazzy, you can find music that others consider jazzy.

Many Flavors of Radio -- Last.fm formerly supported a variety of radio selections -- you could listen to a Stowe Boyd radio station, based on my favorites -- but now this has been extended in a variety of ways. One option, is to listen to music sharing a given tag: tag radio.

Blogging -- Last.fm now includes a well-integrated blogging capability, which provides basic blogging, but really tight integration with the natural schema of recorded music. When you want to make a post that references a specific artist, album, or track, the blog tool supports a/ checking that the thing referred to actually exists, or that you spelled it correctly, and b/ automatically creates the cross references in the social artifacts database.

Here, I have created a blog entry talking about the band Lali Puna, and specific tracks and albums they've made.

Later on, after this is posted, someone looking at the core artist information about Lali Puna will see that I have written about them.

In this way, Last.fm will support a rich, socialized experience for its users, with personal observations, listening behavior, tags, and implicit and explicit relationships with friends and those with similar musical tastes. These social elements are clearly the foreground for any serious user, after a short period of involvement. Those who wish to search through the natural, domain information can certainly do so, but that will rapidly lead the searcher to the social information: what people are writing about and thinking about the bands, music, and tracks that make up the shared space that defines Last.fm discourse.

Close

There is no doubt in my mind that Last.fm has all the lineaments of success as an advanced example of social architecture. Whether they will be a business success is a function of other factors. Clearly, the company has shifted its business model: it is trying to make money. They have partitioned a number of features -- like broadcasting a personalized radio station -- into an "upgraded" account, which costs $3/month.

And they have adopted the key mechanism of making money on social applications: integrated ecommerce. Anyone interested in Lali Puna, after reading my review, is offered the option to buy the album. However, this is only loosely coupled at the moment: you leave the context of Last.fm for the actual transaction. I feel that this will be replaced in the future by a much more integrated buying experience.

Also, aside from the status of being "upgraded", Last.fm hasn't pushed ahead into the notion of digital reputation. I can only imagine that, as soon as people start creating tags, blog posts, and comments, reputation will soon follow. Then we will see a closure in the authority and authenticity aspects of social relations.

There are some other niddling details, that I trust they will remedy quickly, like lack of RSS feed from the Last.fm blogs, and other content aggregation areas. I would like to know whenever my pal Gary Turner posts on his Last.fm blog, or when anyone posts something about Lali Puna, or whenever someone posts on the "downtempo" tag. I bet that will be coming soon.

All in all, this is a textbook example of the idea I had in mind when I posted the Starting From Scratch: Social Design Is Hard piece. Once they have built those missing bits, I have the in-depth case study I need for a comprehensive seminar on social architecture: coming soon, I hope!

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