Help

The Service

What is Last.fm?

Last.fm is a service that keeps track of what music you listen to, and then produces a large number of features personalised to you.

You can use Last.fm to listen to music, find out about artists you may like, other people with similar music taste, gigs in your local area, charts and quilts for your personal site, as well as much more.

What is scrobbling?

Scrobbling a song means that when you listen to it, the name of the song is sent to Last.fm and added to your music profile.

Once you've signed up and downloaded Last.fm, you can scrobble songs you listen to on your computer or iPod automatically. Start scrobbling yourself, and see what artists you really listen to the most. Songs you listen to will also appear on your Last.fm profile page for others to see.

Millions of songs are scrobbled every day. This data helps Last.fm to organise and recommend music to people; we use it to create personalised radio stations, and a lot more besides.

Do I have to pay anything to use all this?

Nope! It's free to sign up and use Last.fm, and you're more than welcome to join in.

How is my privacy protected?

• We do not display email addresses, so no-one can link your username to your email address or harvest your address for spamming.
• Audioscrobbler Plugins only send the name of the artist/album/song - not the filename or filetype. This means we cannot tell whether your music is from an original CD or an MP3 file.
• We rotate our webserver logs frequently and destroy them after extracting anonymous statistics.
• Our protocol is documented, and client software is open source, so you're more than welcome to investigate what the software does.

I'm an artist or a label — how do I get my music on Last.fm?

If you own the rights to the music you wish to upload and promote, you can get it on Last.fm for free.

You can read more about this, and other questions you may have as a label or artist here.

_{Please note, our labels interface is currently only in English.}

User Profiles

How do I add a user picture, personal information and an e-mail address to my profile?

Once you're logged in, you can simply click on "Settings" in the top right corner of the site.

From here, you can upload an avatar, and add personal info about yourself.

Why doesn't everything update immediately?

We have a layer of caching which prevents the website from accessing our database too frequently. Various bits of data shown on the site are cached for periods of time. Data that is more difficult to calculate is cached longer.

This is done so that pages will load much quicker throughout the site.

Why don't my tracks show up as Recently Played?

If you find that you're having issues with scrobbling your music - this would be why your profile doesn't get updated - please read this FAQ here if you're using our software: What can I do if my software has stopped scrobbling my music?

If you're using the flash player on the site, please make sure that you're logged in on the site, and try logging out and in again if necessary.

Please also check our forums for any announcements about any other current issues that might cause your Recently Played Tracks not appearing on your profile.

What happens if I've forgotten my password?

If you specified an e-mail address during signup, please head over to the Password Reset form, and fill in your username and email address.

Alternatively, you can go to our Support Section and send us an email. Please remember to tell us your username, and any other information to help prevent a fraudulent reset password request.

Can I change my username?

Sorry, but it is not possible for us to change your username.

Similarly, you cannot create a new account and choose to have your stats moved from one account to another.

What are friends?

Friends are people you want to have a connection of friendship with on last.fm. Once you're friends with a user, they will show up on the 'Friends' tab of your profile (as well as the right sidebar of your profile) . You'll also be able to see what they're listening to in real-time on your dashboard.

You can request a user's friendship by clicking the 'add as friend' button on their user page. They will receive a message that you've requested their friendship. They have to accept this to make the friendship 'mutual' and then you will see them show up on the 'Friends' tab of your profile.

You can also find existing friends on Last.fm with the shortcut on your dashboard (top left) or the 'Find friends...' link on the 'Friends' tab of your profile. You will be able to find your contacts on Last.fm from your Gmail, Yahoo Mail, AOL Mail or MSN Hotmail address book.

What are Neighbours?

Your neighbours are people with similar music taste to you. Because neighbours are generated based on the music you listen to, you'll need to listen to at least 5 artists and wait about a week before your neighbours appear.

Your overall neighbours (people that have the most music in common with you overall) will appear on the 'Neighbours' tab of your profile (as well as the right sidebar of your profile).

Every week, you'll get new neighbours that you can see on your dashboard. These people have music similarity with you depending on what you've been listening to that week! You can see what your weekly neighbours are listening to in real time at the bottom of your dashboard. You can check out a complete list of your weekly neighbours on the 'Users' tab on your dashboard.

Think of your neighbours as recommended users... they already have the same music taste as you, why not leave them a shout and say hello?

How do I delete my account?

Should you wish to delete your account, you can do this by selecting "Settings" in the top right, and then navigating to the "Account" tab.

From here, make sure you enter your password correctly, and confirm that you want to delete your account.

How can I clear all my listening history and start again?

To clear any listening data or tagging history you can find this option in your settings under the accounts tab. Make sure you enter your password and confirm you wish to clear the information. Please note, it may take a while for this to take effect on your profile.

Can I delete a track or artist from my overall charts?

It's not possible for you to delete an individual track or artist from your overall charts but you can remove any plays you have made from the past 2 weeks by going to your profile page, and then selecting the Charts tab at the top. From there, select "recent tracks" in the top drop down box. On this page, you'll see some bins to the far right of each track, and all you need to do is to click the bin for the corresponding track you may wish to remove.

How often do the "last 3/6/12 months" charts get updated?

The "last 3/6/12 months" charts, which you can choose to have displayed instead of the overall charts on your profile here in your site settings under "Display Preferences", are currently updated only once a month.

Radio

How can I listen to the radio?

You can listen to the Last.fm radio with either our on-site Flash player, or the Last.fm Software.

You can set up which one you want to use by going to Preferences in the top right of the site, and then selecting the Website tab.

The Flash Player:
The Flash player is a small on site feature which you can use the listen to the radio. The player is lightweight, and loads up in your web browser, so you need not download or install anything.

The Last.fm Software:
The Last.fm Software can be downloaded here. With the software, you can also choose to install some plugins to keep track of what you listen to from your local media player and manage your profile in greater depth.

All of our streams run at 128kbps, so to listen to our streams with minimal interruption, we recommend a connection with a downstream of at least 256kbit. Please note, other applications which use your connection may affect streaming performance.

How can I listen to a specific track?

You can listen to any track where you can see a preview icon next to its name. Preview icons are small black, or grey, play buttons.

By default, we can only allow for you to listen to a 30 second preview of a track and this is shown with a grey play button.

Should the rights holder allow for there to be a full length preview available, you'll find a black play button to the left of the track name.

If you are based in the US, UK or Germany, you can also use our new Free On-Demand service to listen to full-length tracks.

What does streamable mean?

When an artist, album, or track is streamable, it can be played on Last.fm Radio. Streamable music is indicated by the presence of preview buttons on a music page. All Last.fm radio stations -- such as personal, neighbour, similar artist, and tag radio -- are built from our growing library of streamable music.

If your favourite artist or track isn't streamable yet, fear not! We are continually adding new music to be played on the radio.

But wait, how can non-streamable music have listeners?!
We provide charts and other information for tons of non-streamable music by using the information users like you submit through their Audioscrobbler plug-ins. Thanks to this data about what people are playing on their own computers, you can explore, tag, and recommend lots of music on the Last.fm website even if it isn't streamable yet.

What is Discovery Mode?

Discovery Mode is a subscriber-only radio feature. With Discovery Mode enabled, Last.fm will only play you music which isn't already in your profile. This way, you'll always hear new music on the radio.

Discovery Mode currently takes into account data from only your past 12 months of listening data, and this information is updated on a monthly basis.

To enable discovery mode within the Last.fm official client, go to the Tools menu, and select the option "Enable Discovery Mode".

Due to the nature of Discovery Mode, this will not work on some radio stations, due to how their content is generated. Examples include your personal radio, and loved tracks radio. In order to enjoy Discovery Mode's full potential, you will need to listen to other user's personal radio stations, or global tag stations.

How do I open up these lastfm:// links?

When you download and install the Last.fm Application, it should automatically associate itself with lastfm:// links. The web browsers Internet Explorer and Safari should have no problem understanding these links.

Should this not be the case, below you will find a short how-to, in order to get it working with Mozilla Firefox.

1. Ensure you're running the latest version of the software by checking for updates within the software.
2. Open up Firefox, and go to about:config
3. In the location bar, right click and then select New > String.
4. Name the string network.protocol-handler.app.lastfm
5. The value of the string should be the path to where you installed the Last.fm Application. For example, C:\Program Files\Last.fm\LastFM.exe

Why do I get "Not enough content" error messages?

If you find yourself getting the above error message, please take the time to read the below reasons why.

1. Due to radio licensing laws, we can't allow for our streams to play tracks from one artist more than once per a set time frame.
2. Personal Tags may give this error, as such we ask that users ensure that their tag has at least 15 streamable items. This too, is due to radio licensing laws. We also ask that you make sure they're not all from the same artists, as this will conflict with point 1 and cause the error to crop up again.
3. Global Tags may give this error when the set contains less than 15 streamable items. In the case of subscribers, they can listen to global tag stations that have at minimum of 5 entries.

With the above in mind, the way to overcome this error message is to either wait it out, or to listen to something else. Times like these are a great opportunity to go out digging for other radio stations. You never know what you may come across.

Why are some tracks "Recommended by" a label?

This is a feature known as Powerplay. For a fee, a label or artist can target a number of radio plays to Last.fm users, based on their musical taste. They can then find out how well our users rate their track. We don't think this feature is evil:

• It's not "payola" because we clearly mark which tracks are sponsored by the label.
• Once you've skipped or banned a track, it will never be played to you again.
• It only appears in global radio stations - you won't get Powerplay tracks in your personal stations.
• It's fair to the smaller artists: any artist can use this feature to get their music heard for a reasonable price.
• It's good for you, the user: it's in the artist's interest to target the track to the right people, and you might get to hear a pre-release track before anyone else.

We think this is the least intrusive way of making money from streams to pay for our radio license, and keep the radio free.

Radio Modes

Personal Radio

Personal Radio gives you an insight into a user's entire profile. This station's content is built up based upon every song that the user gets scrobbled to their profile, via a plugin or the radio service.

Anyone can listen to the personal radio of another user, however, to listen to your own radio station you'll need to subscribe.

Neighbours Radio

Neighbours Radio is a radio mode which will tune into a station where the music is made up from all of your neighbour's profiles.
With Neighbours Radio, it's easy for a user to discover some music that may be similar to the music they like, and as such help broaden their music tastes.

Loved Tracks Radio

Loved Tracks Radio is a radio mode which is a Subscriber benefit.

Tracks that will feature on this radio station are tracks that the user manually marks as "loved". To mark tracks as loved, a user must be using the Last.fm Application or the on-site Flash player. As a track plays on either the radio, or from their own local library, a quick click of the "Love" button will do the trick.

Group Radio

Group Radio is a radio mode that is accessible via a group's page. This radio mode simply plays you back a station full of content of what's within the group member's profiles.

Similar Artist Radio

Similar Artist Radio is a radio mode accessible via an artist's page. The content on this station is based upon system generated "Similar Artists".

Top Listeners Radio

Top Listeners is another radio mode found upon artist pages. Once tuned into this radio mode, you'll get content played to you from the profiles of users found to be the top listeners of the artist.

Tag Radio

Tag Radio is a radio mode that will play back items that have been tagged with the same keyword or phrase. To read more about tagging, please refer yourself to our Tagging FAQ. There are two types of Tag Radio, as explained below.

Global tag radio: As explained above, the will only play back items that have all been tagged with the same tag. The content in each tag set is based upon what everyone on the site has chosen to use that tag for. Before a global tag can be tuned into, it will need at least 5 streamable items to be included in it, and will need to have been used by more than just one person.

Personal tag radio: Personal tag radio works exactly as explained above, however, the content it uses is based solely on one user's tag. In order to listen to a personal tag, 5 streamable items will need tagging at minimum.

Artist Pages

How are the similar artists calculated?

The list of artists which you may see on an artist page as being "similar" is based exactly on our user's listening habits. If a lot of users listen to Artist X, but also Artist Y and Z - Y and Z artists will become similar to X.

With a few added constants and other functions thrown into the equation to help make it more accurate, you'll find that's how Similar Artists are made.

How are the images for an artist chosen?

The artist images are uploaded by the artists and labels themselves, or by you, the users.

To get an image to appear for that artist go to that artist's page, click on the "Pics" tab at the top and select the option to upload an image.

After uploading your image, your image will appear towards the end of all available images for that artist. Official artist and label uploaded images will take precedence over user uploaded images. In order to get your image further up the listing, it will need to recieve positive votes.

If you find an image you feel is inappropriate, or incorrect, you can flag the image. Once an image is flagged, a moderator can delete it if the image is wrong, innapropriate or of poor taste.

What are the rules behind uploading artist images?

We ask that when users upload their artist images that they make sure they have the legal right to do so. Concerning this issue, you will see a short message at the top of any upload page in orange text clearly stating that we wish users to only use images in the public domain, or those with explicit licensing for promotional use.

Other guidelines to be aware of:

1. Images should be actual images of the artist. In the case of "virtual groups", such as Gorillaz, or bands that appear in movies/TV shows, the "characters" may be shown.
2. The images section for artists is reserved solely for artist images. Album covers are not allowed. Logos and other representations are to be only used when actual artist images do not exist.
3. No "funny" or anti-artist images to be used. Similarly, it is preferable that no nudity or sexually explicit images are uploaded.
At any time, the moderating team and staff reserve the right to delete any images should the need arise.

Can I upload album art?

If the album page doesn't currently have album art, head over to the album's page and look out for the "Cover Art" tab. Click this and follow the instructions there to upload the correct cover art.

Should the rights owner, be it the label or the artist, wish to upload this, they can do it via the Labels Interface.

Is it possible to merge different profiles for the same artist into one?

It is currently not possible to merge different profiles for the same artist into one artist profile. For instance, if there are other profiles with different spellings of the name of a particular artist, it is not possible to have these redirect to the profile with the correctly spelled name. Please note that this also applies for tracks and albums.

That this works for some artist profiles, for instance that "Beatles" redirects to "The Beatles", is due to an older moderation system which no new moderations can be added to any more.

We are working on a solution to this issue, and we will announce when a new moderation system is in place.

In the meantime, please make sure that the music files you scrobble have correct ID3 tags, also as it is currently not possible to change the spelling of an artist or track name once scrobbled to your profile.

You can also help us to gather more information on the different spellings of artist and track names by fingerprinting your music, as this information will eventually allow us to know what the correct spellings are, and to moderate other entries for different spellings based on this. You can find some more information about fingerprinting in our blog and in our FAQ as well.

And what about artists with the same name?

It is currently not possible to disambiguate artists with the same name, which means that if an artist shares their name with at least one other artist, they will have to share one Last.fm artist profile.

Please note that any other valid artist with the same name has the equal right to appear on such a shared profile, including their music, their pictures, their artist description and any other information on them.
It is for instance not allowed to remove their description from the wiki (for more information about what a wiki about more than one artist with the same name should look like, please see this FAQ), and it is also not possible to have an official primary image for one artist, while there are other pictures for the other artist(s) which all users can vote for and thus decide which one of the artists should get the "main" image.

Tags

What are tags?

Tags are like keywords or labels.

You can assign as many tags as you like to any track, album, or artist in your musical profile. Tags are a great way to label items by genre ('rock', 'electropop', 'alt-country', and so on), but the possibilities are endless.

Think a song would sound great on the highway? Tag it with 'driving'. If you find an album very relaxing, tag it with 'chillout' or 'relax' (or both). Keep a list of artists to tell a friend about by creating a tagset called 'singers Sarah would like'.

Tags are fun for the whole family.

So, what are tags good for, and what's the point of it?

Tagging your music makes it a lot easier to find later; click on a tag word and you can instantly see a list of items you've tagged with that term.

But what's really interesting is that you can also view everyone else's tags! Wonder what a new artist sounds like? Check their tags. Explore how different people tag the stuff you like, or view what the entire site thinks is good chillout music.

What's more, Last.fm now offers tag radio: pick and tag and play! By tagging your music, you're contributing to an always-evolving tag ecosystem of keyword-based playlists.

How do I tag something?

You can tag a track, artist or album by simply going to it's page, and then clicking the "Tag this " button located to the left. A little box will then pop up in which you can enter the tags you wish to use for that item.

Alternatively, you can tag items with the new Last.fm application. Click the "Tag" button when the item you want to tag is playing, select what you want to tag in the drop down box at the top and then just enter the tags you want to use.

How do I edit or remove tags?

To untag an item, simply perform the following,

1. Go to the page of the item you wish to remove the tag from.
2. Click on the "Tag this item" button you should see present on the page
3. In the text field with your tags name in it, remove the tag want deleted
4. Save the changes

Once done, the item will no longer be tagged.

Respectively, to remove a tag, perform the above for all the items on the tag, and the tag will then be deleted.

Why does this artist have a tag that isn't correct? How can I change this?

On artist overview pages, the tags that you see are an overview of what everyone on Last.fm has tagged that artist as.

Due to the nature of tags being opinions, and it is not possible to remove someone else's opinion of what an artist should be tagged as.

The most that you can do is to tag something in whatever way you feel is best, and as more and more people use a tag, it will increase in popularity and be favoured over less used tags.

Groups

What are groups?

Groups are a way for users who have a common interest to get together. Music statistics are generated for groups just like individual users, so you can see what musical taste certain types of people have.

Anyone can create a new group and encourage people to join it. It's also possible for a group founder to restrict access to the group, and its associated forum.

How do I make my own group?

You can create your own group by clicking the "Users" button at the top and then selecting the Groups tab. From there, you should be able to see a link to create a new group towards the top of the page.

How do the group charts work?

Once a group has 10 or more members, you'll find that your group will start to have a chart generated. The way that these charts work is that every "1" will represent a group member.

For example, say you have 3 people in your group listen to Radiohead that week, the chart will be 3, and not the number of times that the three of them listened to Radiohead. This helps prevent the skewing of charts by a single group member who leaves a single artist or album on repeat for extended periods of time.

How can I leave a group that I've joined?

To leave a group, go to that group's page, and click the "Leave this group" link that is present towards the top left, below the group image.

What do I do if the leader of my group isn't around any more?

If your group is in despair and needs a new leader, drop an email via the Support Form, and it'll be dealt with accordingly.

Please note that when you send such a request, could it be in the following format:

Group: The group name as presented on the site
Current Leader: The username of the current leader
New Leader: Whom you want as the new leader
Hierarchy: Here could you please say how you want the new leader instated, as a co-leader, or a new leader with the removal of the old.

Can I delete a group?

As it stands, you can't delete a group. This is to prevent abuse.

However, if a group is older than three months, and has less than three members, it will be automatically removed by the system due to inactivity.

Labels and Artists

Why should I register my label or artist with Last.fm?

There are a number of reasons why you may wish to register your artist, or label, with Last.fm.

Last.fm is a powerful platform on which you can promote your music to the people that really matter. We can target people who like specific artists or styles of music within our massive global community. Last.fm is designed specifically to aid the spread of music through a large community.

By registering with Last.fm, you can get access to a number of features. To name a few, you can manage your music more effectively, view in depth statistics about your fans, and use a range of tools to help spread your music. All of these tools are highly valuable to both artists, and labels, and we believe that they can help the spread of your music to a much greater degree.

How can I get my music on Last.fm?

To get your music on Last.fm, you will need a labels account.

If you already have a Last.fm User account:
If you already have an account on Last.fm as a user, you can register now for an artist or label account.

If you're a first time Last.fm visitor:
You will need to register a labels or artist account from which to manage your music. You can register here. Once done, you will then be able to link up your music to your registered account.

Once you've registered with Last.fm, you will be able to add music to our radio streams, and manage your presence through our Music Manager.

Please note that our Music Manager is currently only available in English.

How much does all this cost?

It is free to register, add music and to use all of the main features of the Last.fm Label site.

We do have some advanced promotional features, however these are purely optional, and cost a minimal amount should you wish to use them.

Why is my artist or label already on Last.fm?

You may have found that Last.fm already features a page for your artist name and music. This is due to our user-generated content and software.

Last.fm collects the artist, track and album name of the music that its users listen to, and automatically creates a page on which the statistics for these items can be shown.

In most cases, finding that we have an artist page for your music does not mean that we have any of your audio files of your music stored on our servers for streaming or downloading. We simply have statistics that X many people listened to your music, and nothing else.

We would love to get you involved, and allow you to manage your music as you see best. You can register to Last.fm as a label, or artist, by going to here.

Where can I find your terms and conditions?

You can view the Terms and Conditions for registering to Last.fm as a label, or artist, by going to here.

I have more questions I want answered before I register my label, what should I do?

Should you have any further enquiries, you're more than welcome to send us an email. From there, a member of our Music Department will get back to you as soon as possible.

Please note: Please write your label/artist support requests in English only; we currently do not offer any support in any other languages.

Artist/Label Wiki Pages

What are the wiki pages?

The wiki pages are places where any member of the Last.fm community can edit the contents, in order to help build up better, and more accurate content.

The purpose is to provide a concise, and unbiased description of the artist or label. This can include basic information about the person/group, the type of music they play, what they're most known for, and any other relevant information.

You can access an artist's wiki page by clicking on the Bio tab on the artist's page. To access a label's wiki page, click on the Wiki tab on the label's page.

What are the guidelines behind adding content to the pages?

If you see someone break any of these rules, please edit the wiki accordingly, and if necessary, notify a member of the Moderating Team

The following rules apply to all wiki pages

• Submitted content must not violate copyright. It's illegal to plagiarise someone else's biography of this artist.
• You can copy from Wikipedia, or any other GFDL-licensed source, provided that you enter the URL to the source in the sources box below.
• All submitted content remains copyright of the author, and is licensed under the GFDL.

Style Rules:

• This description should be written in the third person, factual and unbiased. No personal opinions.
• Please use the same language as the site you're using. If you're on the English Last.fm site, use English. If you're on the German site, use German.
• Try and keep it relatively short (a few paragraphs).
• Most BBCode is allowed.
• Artists and labels are not exempt from these rules.

A copy of these rules are available on any wiki page if you click "Edit" at the top.

What if I'm the artist/label?

Being the artist, or a friend of the artist, or family, or whatever, gives no special permission on wiki pages. The wiki is for factual descriptions of the artist only.

It's not a personal homepage and should not be treated as such. Anything outside of an unbiased artist description should be put on your "official" artist website, not in the wiki.

Labels/Artists will also need to remember to write in third person text (using "He/She/They" as opposed to first-person "I/We/Our"). As the wiki is open and editable by anyone, if a page has been edited by several different people, who is "I" or "we"? By using only third person text, the page is more open for editing by others, and the confusion over who "I" is can be easily avoided.

Why can't I add any opinions of my own to the wiki?

The point of the wiki is to give as much factual information about an item where possible. Opinions are not facts, and can often be misleading.

Should you wish to post an opinion of an artist, or label, you can use the shoutbox, group forums, or your journal.

I tried to edit a wiki page, but it says I can't edit it! Why not?

Some artists are subject to continuous abuse and style rule violations. When this happens, a moderator will lock the page to prevent any further abuse.

Locked pages are only editable by moderators and staff. Should a page be locked, the only means to edit it is to send changes in a PM to a site moderator that locked that wiki page. From there, they can then ensure the content does not violate rules and apply the edit.

There's more than one artist with the same name. How should the wiki page be done?

Until a workable solution can be found, artists with the same name are all on one page on last.fm. Start the page with a text indicating this, such as: "There are (x) bands with the name (band name):"

Follow it up with separate artist descriptions, with some kind of indication as to where the next artist's info begins. Normally this is done by numbering each artist description.

The word "brief" is particularly important on these pages when writing artist descriptions.

If you know there's two artists with the same name, but only actually know one of them, write the info for one, and start the second with something like "There is also second artist using this name." Hopefully someone who knows them can come in and add the info for them.

Artists are to be listed in the order of their popularity. To determine the popularity order, you are to use the Overall charts for that artist.

Under no circumstances is it appropriate to delete information about one of the artists to replace it with info about another. Deleting info about the "other" artist(s), or giving any one preferential treatment to the detrement of the others can be considered abuse of the last.fm wiki and will be treated accordingly.

Subscribing

I just subscribed, but it doesn't seem to have worked. What should I do?

It's advised that you wait 24 hours before you get worried, but if they still don't appear after then, head over to the Support Area.

From there send a message, along with a copy of your receipt, stating clearly your username and how much you were charged.

Where can I check how much longer I have left as a subscriber?

Check your Subscription tab. This can be found by going to Settings in the top right, and then clicking the tab titled "Subscription".

Can I purchase a subscription on behalf of someone else?

If you wish to purchase a subscription for someone else, head over to the Subscribe page as per usual and where it asks for a username, replace it with the intended recipient's.

How can I subscribe if I don't have a valid credit/debit card?

If you wish to subscribe, and can't pay by card, we also welcome payment via PayPal. To use PayPal to subscribe, simply head to the Subscribe page as per usual, and select the option to pay via PayPal that is located above the email field.

Playlists

How do I add items to my playlist?

To add an item to your playlist, simply head over to any page on Last.fm that features track charts. From there, hover your cursor over a track and you'll see a black cassette icon appear to the right. Clicking this icon will add this track to your playlist.

You can also add directly from any track page by clicking the 'Add to my playlist' link on the left, under the artist picture.

Where can I manage my playlist, and remove tracks?

Go to your profile page by clicking on your username in the top right corner. From here, locate the "My Playlist" header, slightly below it will be an Edit your playlist link.

You can name your playlist, reorder tracks and delete tracks here.

How can I embed my playlist for others to listen to?

To embed your playlist, you first need to have at least 15 streamable tracks in your playlist, each from different artists. One you've got this done, select Widgets at the top of the site, and then the Playlist Player option on the left.

I have 15 tracks, why won't my playlist play?

Here are few tips to make your playlist playable:

You need to add at least 15 tracks that are "streamable." Streamable tracks are the ones that have the black or grey play buttons next to them.

Add as many different artists as possible; you can't make a playlist out of an album by a single artist, for example.

How big can I make my playlist? Is there a maximum size?

There isn't a maximum playlist size, but at the moment playlists don't work too well when they get very large (say, more than 500 tracks). We're working on improving this, but in the meantime you may need to slim down extremely large playlists if you experience difficulties.

Why does my playlist stop playing sometimes and say "Not Enough Content"?

In order to comply with music licensing laws, we can't play the same track or artist to you within a short period of time. The best way to ensure that you can listen non-stop to your playlist is to add a wide variety of artists to it.

Events

Where can I find events suited to my tastes or location?

To find events based upon your personal listening habits, simply click "Dashboard" in the top right corner of the site. Once done, click on the events tab, and you'll now be presented with an interface which will find events suited to you.

How can I add an event?

If you'd like to add an event, we ask that you search for the event first to ensure that it doesn't already exist.

If there's no entry for the event yet, go to the "Add Event" tab and add the event from there. Please make sure to enter the correct details (date, venue, location, etc.) as not all of these can be easily changed afterwards.

Please note that abuse of our events system is forbidden and fake events will be deleted.

What can I do if I see something incorrect on the events system?

If you see something wrong on the events system, please report it to a member of our moderating team who will then see to the issue accordingly.

To report something, go to the event or venue page, and click on the "Flag this ..." link. From there, provide as much information possible.

If the item needs merging with another venue or event, please give the links to the duplicates. The more information that you provide, the faster the issue can be dealt with.

You can read more about moderating events here.

I tagged some photos on Flickr but they don't appear on Last.fm. What's wrong?

Sometimes it takes a little while for newly-added photos on Flickr to filter through. Leave it a few days and see if your photos turn up.

If they still don't appear, it's likely that your Flickr account has not been approved as public by the Flickr team. You can tell if this is the case by looking at the top of this page.

Listening History Importing

What is Listening History Importing?

Listening History Importing is a feature whereby new users can choose to submit their media player's listening history to Last.fm when they first sign up.

By doing this, new users can have charts and neighbours populated for them, within moments of joining the Last.fm community.

How can I import my listening history?

When you first download the client, simply enter your username and password. If you've installed a plugin for a media player that supports this feature, a prompt will follow. (iTunes, Windows Media Player and Winamp)

Once you choose to upload your listening history, a small notice will appear on your profile, and all you need do is sit back and wait for our servers to process your data.

Fingerprinting

What is fingerprinting?

Fingerprinting is a technique for analysing the actual audio content of the tracks you listen to in order to produce a unique ID for each song. This will allow us to identify and scrobble what you listen to without having to rely on ID3 tags and other metadata. It will also allow us to automatically figure out what the correct spelling of song titles should be and clean up our catalogue data.

For now, all that the desktop app does is collect the fingerprint data to bootstrap our moderation system. It does not change any MP3 files on your computer.

This does involve a slight CPU hit at the start of each track, and potentially a longer one later on in case it's a track we haven't yet fingerprinted in its entirety. If this bothers you, you can switch off fingerprinting altogether from the Scrobbling page of the Options/Preferences dialog.

Fingerprinting will identify the artist, album and song name only. Last.fm will not be able to identify the source of the song. We will not know if the song is from a CD or mp3.

Widgets

How can I put my widgets on LiveJournal?

Once you have chosen which one of our Last.fm widgets you'd like to embed in your LiveJournal profile or in any of your posts on your journal page, simply click on the "Add to LiveJournal" button. You will then see a box containing the embed code for the widget you have chosen. In order to embed this widget in your LiveJournal profile, copy the code without modifying it and paste it into the "Bio" field on your "Edit Profile" page on LiveJournal. It will then appear on your LiveJournal profile page under "Bio".

You can also embed widgets in your LiveJournal journal posts. To do this, copy and paste the embed code without modifying it into the message field when posting a new journal entry (important: You need to enable HTML mode for this, don't use rich text mode). Your widget will then appear in your journal post, once it has been saved.

The Free On-Demand Service

What is the Free On-Demand service?

Free On-Demand is a service from Last.fm that will allow you to listen to any track in our catalogue in its entirety. Currently this feature is only available in the UK, USA and Germany.

You can listen to any track we have in our catalogue by clicking on the icon shown next to any track we have available for Free On-Demand listening.

You don't even need an account to start listening, so why not head over to our search page and tune in!

How can I listen to an entire track?

Anywhere you see the image on a track page along with the text "full track", means you can click it and listen to this track with our Flash player within your browser. All you need to do is head to the track page for the song you want to listen to, and that's it. You don't even need to have an account, you just need to make sure you've got Flash installed for your browser, and you're good to go.

At present, it is only possible to listen to these tracks with the Flash player on the website.

Why did I get a 30 second preview instead of the full track?

There are three reasons why you may get a preview, as opposed to the full track.

At the moment, the Free On-Demand service is limited to certain territories. At the time of writing, this consists of USA, UK and Germany.

Free On-Demand is currently in a public beta testing phase. We'll soon be offering an enhanced subscription package to allow unlimited plays, but for now you're limited to three full length plays per track. In the meantime, why not explore our catalogue and discover some new artists, check out recommendations, or enjoy some old favourites.

The other reason why you may not be able to listen to the track in full could be due to us either not having the track in our catalogue, or not having the the permission to stream the full track from the label or artist. We are constantly reaching out to labels and artists in order to help expand our catalogue and build up an unrivalled catalogue for our users.

If you are a label or artist, why not head over to our MusicManager and get your music heard!

How do I listen to a track more than 3 times?

For now, you can purchase a copy of the track for your own personal library from one of our affiliates, which you can then listen to as much as you want. We will be offering a subscription service with unlimited plays soon. You can read more about this service here. You can also head over to our subscription page and sign up to be notified when this launches.

Please note, this 3 play limit only applies to Free On-Demand listening. All existing radio services will continue to behave exactly the same as before.

If I stream a track 3 times, will I still be able to hear it on the radio?

Yes. There are no new limits to our already existing radio services. The 3 play restriction only applies to On-Demand listening. Listening to a track 3 times using the in-page preview doesn't prevent it from playing on your radio, and of course you can also still listen to it as a 30 seconds preview instead of a full-length one.

We haven't taken anything away by introducing this new service - your radio stations and playlists will continue to function as before.

How will the Free On-Demand service affect existing subscribers?

We will continue to offer our current subscription package as it is currently advertised. There will be no change to this package, the public beta of Free On-Demand is an additional service, which is totally free.

How do I use the software to listen to tracks On-Demand?

Listening to tracks On-Demand only work in the in-page Flash player for now, so you may need to adjust your settings in order to listen to them. To adjust your settings, please carry out the following:

Change your settings here.
Make sure your Music Playback settings are one of:

• Play everything in the Flash player (in-page)
• Play previews in-page and radio in the Last.fm software

Because this service is new, it is currently available through the website only. We hope to have news about integration with our desktop software soon though.

Do I need to be logged in to listen?

No, this service does not require you to be logged in to the site.

However, logging in will ensure that the tracks you play are scrobbled to your profile, and as a result, we'll be able to improve recommendations we make to you.

Notifications

What's the dashboard digest?

Last.fm will occasionally email you with selected highlights from all the recommended stuff on your dashboard, including concerts, free downloads, and music videos.

If you don't want to receive these emails, you can control this and other notification settings here

The Last.fm Software

What is the Last.fm software?

The Last.fm software (also called "the client") is a desktop application which you can use to play Last.fm radio stations, scrobble your own music you listen to with your media player on your computer, and to edit your profile by tagging your music, loving and banning tracks, adding items to your playlist, and more.

What are the technical requirements for using the software?

Microsoft Windows
To use the latest version of our software, you need a PC-compatible computer running Windows XPor Vista. You can get the latest version from our download page.

If you are running an older version of Windows, for instance Windows 98 or 2000, we ask that you update your operating system. Alternatively you can use an older version of the software which you can download here, but please note that as this version is outdated, we can't help you with any problems you might have with it.

Apple Mac OS X
Our Mac client requires OS X Tiger and Leopard (10.4.0 and later). You can download the latest version from our download page.

If you use OS X 10.3.9, you can download an older version of the software here, but please note that we can't issue any support for this older version, only for the latest one. Unfortunately, there aren't any versions of the software available for OS X versions older than 10.3.9.

Linux
We also offer a Linux version of the client. You can get the Ubuntu Gutsy package from our download page here.

The client is also available as a source tarball and from Subversion. Details about this can also be found on our download page, towards the bottom.

Which media players does the software support?

Our Windows client officially works with the following media players:

• Winamp, version 5.5x
• Windows Media Player, versions 9, 10, 11
• iTunes, versions 6 and 7
• Foobar2000, versions 0.9.2, 0.9.4, 0.9.5

These plugins are downloaded and installed automatically via the client; simply go to the menu Tools > Get Plugin... and follow the instructions in the setup wizard.

Our Mac client works with iTunes. At the time of writing, there are no media player plugins for the Linux client.

What if I'm using one of the standalone plugins or a third party application?

The Audioscrobbler standalone plugins are no longer officially supported by us. You are welcome to use them, but please note that we can't issue support for them should you run into any problems.

This also applies to any other third party plugins or applications, such as iScrobbler, MobileScrobbler, Amarok or Rhythmbox. Due to them not being developed by us, we ask to you to get in touch with the respective developers or user communities should you have any issues or questions about such third party plugins or applications.

What can I do if my software has stopped scrobbling my music?

If your software has stopped scrobbling your music, there could be various reasons for this. The most common ones are:

1) It cannot connect to the Internet to submit your scrobbles. Please make sure that your Internet connection is working fine, and that no firewall or no other security program is blocking the software.

2) It cannot connect to our submissions server, either because the server is actually currently down (please see here for it's status, or because it fails to handshake with the server for some reason. In either case, your scrobbles are getting cached locally and will get submitted once the server can be reached again. You can check this in the Diagnostics dialogue which can be found in the menu Help; on the Scrobbling tab, the status of the submissions server would be "Error: Could not reach server" in this case and it should list the cached tracks.
If your scrobbles are getting cached for a longer period, try forcing a rehandshake with the submissions server by clicking your username in the menu Account. This should trigger the submission of the cached tracks.

3) It might be that you don't have the correct plugins installed, or that you don't have them installed properly. Please check this FAQ for which plugins the software supports, and how to install them.

4) If you are using Windows Media Player, please make sure that the scrobbling plugin is enabled in the media player. WMP disables any third party plugins automatically if the program was terminated unexpectedly.
To enable the plugin again, go to Tools > Options > Plug-Ins > Category "Background" in WMP9, or Tools > Plug-Ins > Options > Category "Background" in WMP10, or Now Playing > Plug-ins > Other in WMP11, and tick the checkbox next to "Last.fm Plugin".

5) It simply might be that you are using an outdated version of the software, the media player plugin, or the media player itself. If supported by your operating system, we recommend you to use the latest versions of the software, plugin and media player in any case.

If this doesn't help you, please follow the instructions posted in this forum thread here.

If you still have problems scrobbling, please send us a support email, giving as many details as possible:

• Which operating system exactly are you using?
• Which media player and which version of it are you using?
• Which versions of the software and the media player plugin have you installed? You can look this up in the menu Help > About Last.fm...)

Do you know at which point the scrobbling process fails - does the music you listen to with your media player appear in the software player or not, does the Diagnostics dialogue say that your tracks are getting cached, or is there no error message at all?
- Please use the "Copy to Clipboard" function in the Diagnostics dialogue to copy and paste this information into the support email you're sending us. The more information you give us, the better we can help you to get your software scrobbling again. Help us, to help you. :)

iPod Scrobbling

How do I scrobble my iPod?

You need to have the latest version of our software installed in order to use Last.fm for scrobbling your iPod along with iTunes 7.

To start using the Last.fm software for scrobbling tracks played on your iPod, you need to make sure your iPod is synced with iTunes.

The first time you connect your iPod with Last.fm installed, set up for your user account and running, a message will pop up near the Last.fm system tray icon to notify you that your iPod will be scrobbled from now on.

Disconnect your iPod, listen to some tracks, and connect it again. Now iTunes will sync with it and update its internal play counts with any new plays on the iPod. Once iTunes is done, Last.fm will analyse iTunes's newly updated play counts to find out whether there were any new plays on the iPod. This could take a while. If new tracks were found, they will be scrobbled to your profile.

By default you won't be asked to confirm your iPod scrobbles, but in case you always want to confirm them, you can enable this in the iPod section of the Options (Preferences on Mac) dialog.

What iPod models does Last.fm support?

Last.fm supports all iPods, Firewire and USB, including iPhone and iPod Touch.

However Linux iPod scrobbling does not yet support iPhone or iPod Touch.

My iPod appears to have scrobbled, but is not shown on my profile.

After you have synced your iPod with iTunes, iPod scrobbles may take up to 20 minutes to appear on your profile.

You can check your submissions history by going to your profile page, and clicking on the title "Recent Tracks", which will let you see your past submissions.

Here, you may notice that if you played a track multiple times on a iPod, all occurrances have the same timestamp, and all plays on an iPod Shuffle have the same timestamp. This is intended behaviour, and you can remove plays from here as per normal.

Can I scrobble my iPod from any iTunes Library?

Automatic iPods will only scrobble from the iTunes with which they are synced.

Manual iPods can be synced from any iTunes Library, but you should only use one, as otherwise you will get duplicated scrobbles.

Can I scrobble from an iPod that is manually managed?

Yes. However, automatic syncing is still recommended.

Manually managed iPods require you to manually transfer tracks to your iPod using iTunes. You can only scrobble manual iPods after the first time they are synced with iTunes.

If you add tracks or change tags of tracks on your iPod after a sync, you should eject and plug in the iPod again to ensure those tracks will scrobble next time.

Can I scrobble my iPod with Linux?

Yes, you can scrobble with Linux using the "scrobble iPod" item in the "Tools" menu in the software.

Whenever I scrobble my iPod, some tracks I listened to a long time ago get detected.

Check if any of these tracks have more than one entry in your iTunes library. If so, remove the duplicate and they should stop being picked up by the iPod scrobbler.

When listening to my manual iPod via iTunes, the tracks get scrobbled twice.

This is a known issue. For now, you can work around it by turning off real-time scrobbling in the Last.fm software when listening through iTunes. Alternatively you can enable "Always confirm iPod scrobbles" in the software's Options dialog, and then answer no when the software asks if you want to scrobble them.