WEEK 6. Website analysis

I had thought this was in for last week, but I’ll leave that one posted and do a more thorough one here. This is about http://www.last.fm/.

How is your chosen site structured?
Below is a screenshot of last.fm’s homepage:
(ok...I can't make this work! Have a look; http://www.last.fm)

Last.fm's structure is non linear and, in my opinion, quite complex. There is no obvious place to ‘begin’ and no clear direction to browse in. There is a variety of different material from bands profiles, to information about these bands, user’s profiles, website statistics and more.
Hypertext features strongly in the non-linear structure of the website. Tags allow you to choose other similar artists, go to user’s profiles who like the artist chosen, and externally to the artist’s website, more information about them and even news articles etc etc. This makes it very easy to ‘jump’ from place to place on the site and to external sites and in my opinion makes it very easy to 'get lost'.

What is it about on a cultural level?
Arguably last.fm and similar sites are a remediation of old media; the radio. This suggests an element of socio-determinism; such sites may just be a result of people’s desire to listen to music which happens to have moved to an online domain. However, interactivity on last.fm plays a much larger role than in any previous ways of listening to music and this suggests that technology has resulted in such sites creation and they would otherwise not be present, nor would anything similar.
Such interactivity suggests a way in which music listeners may have gained some control in the music they consume. This has wider implications in terms of the music industry (see blogs week 4).
There is also arguably some sort of community; users can add ‘friends’ be it friends IRL or people who share tastes, and chat and comment on these users playlists and favourite artists. There is however no wider place such as a forum or chat room for members to come together so i would say that any sort of community is fairly weak/limited.
There are elements of produserism in that any music the user chooses to rate or listen to frequently becomes a part of their own personal radio station which others can listen to. The site does, however have limitations in terms of this as a result of not wishing to infringe copyright. The user cannot choose directly what they wish to listen to rather just suggest what is favoured. This is a slightly limiting aspect of the website but is an essential part of allowing users to listen to so much music in a legal way. Some sort of Literacy (Livingstone) is required; I certainly found navigating the site and understanding the concept of creating my own playlist/station fairly confusing to begin with and I would call myself an experienced user of the internet.


What is the appeal for you as a user?
The main appeal of a site like last.fm to me is the ability to customise the experience of music listening. The music player on last.fm is almost a sort of open source software (Bruns) created with the user’s interaction in mind, allowing even the less experienced web user to create their own radio station for others to listen to. However, limitations in how far the user can choose what music is played (because of copyright issues) mean that the user does not have direct control and can only suggest what he/she would like to listen to, which is one aspect of last.fm i often find frustrating. However, this can also work as an advantage as it allows new artists to be discovered instead of listening to the same ones repeatedly.


Livinstone, S (2003) “The changing nature and uses of media literacy”. http://www.mediaculture-online.de/fileadmin/bibliothek/livingstone_changing_nature/livingstone_changing_nature.pdf [accessed 25/02/09]
Bruns, A “Towards Produsage” http://snurb.info/files/12132812018_towards_produsage_0.pdf [accessed 20/02/09]