dsingleton

Though older APIs they're still used by many older or infrequently updated clients, such as hardware devices with sold with Last.fm integration.

Unfortunately, the longer you've been around the more likely you are to develop dependencies that make it more difficult to upgrade your password hashing.

A new site can do whatever it wants with password hashing, but it becomes harder for older sites with more legacy dependencies to make that kind of change and Last.fm has been around for almost 10 years.

This isn't to say "MD5 is cool, don't worry", but to try and illustrate some of the reasons behind this.

This article is mostly bullshit and certainly doesn't "help grasp what Tech City UK is all about", notably:

"which started as a government effort to rejuvenate East London" is laughably incorrect. Silicon Roundabout was a jokey term coined (by Matt Biddulph) to describe a bunch of companies working and socialising in the area. That was a few years ago, since then it's become a big PR thing for local companies (mostly co-working spaces) and now government.

Sure, there's tech growth, but an much is from pre-existing companies and people. Gov involvement has brought some attention to the area, but also a lot of sycophants and opportunists.

Another good skeptical read: gigaom.com/2011/11/11/is-london-tech-citys-phenomenal-growth-just-spin/

We see them in the pub quite a bit.

It gets harder when someone scrobbles a track by "Felt", to which artist do you attribute it? There's a whole host of problems like that to solve too.

To try and explain the apparent lack of activity; the last couple of years have had a lot of sorting-house, changes in product (moving away from on-demand, charging for some services, etc) and some technical "house keeping". Last.fm has been around for ~8 years, that is a long time and comes with a lot of technical debt, it can slow you down.

PS: One of my favourite things about Last.fm is our approach to openness of data, our API makes it totally possible for hypem (who are awesome, especially Anthony) to use your scrobbling data, even the recommendations we generate for you, on hypem.

We believe that if the data is visible on the website then there should probably be an API for it, because if there isn't, then someone will have to scrape it anyway.

Spotify is trying to be the perfect on demand music service, Last.fm isn't. It's something we tried and ended up moving away from a year or two back.

On demand music is a very difficult market to be in. There are lots of companies trying but many failing or hitting difficulties, like Spotify in the US. There are real challenges in a) being profitable and b) stay on the good side of labels.

Personally I believe that the on-demand part of music streaming is commodity and more can be easily replaced, where as scrobbling provides a richer and more personal experience. However, I do agree with parts of the article, Last.fm hasn't moved as fast as it could have, some features need adding and some improving. That's part of the plan for this year.

Is $167 for all Spotify Lady Gaga plays, or those plays made in Sweeden (and thus under the remit of STIM)?

As I understand music licensing Spotify would be required to pay royalties to the collection society relative to the location of the play.