Last.fm’s first hardware foray with Squeezebox, not quite mobile yet
I was delighted to see that Last.fm have done a deal with Squeezebox. If you haven’t seen or heard of a Squeezebox, it’s effectively a wireless .. box… that you connect to your existing speaker system which is internet-connected to a whole host of audio sources. For example you can stream your songs from a hosted service such as MP3tunes or (I think) metracks. Very swish.
However connecting your Squeezebox to Last.fm is rather exciting, particularly if, like me, you’ve been ’scrobbling’ (recording tracks you’ve been playing) for years. I’ve built up quite a library of favourites and I often listen to my Last.fm music radio online.
The summary from the deal between Logitech’s Squeezebox and Last.fm is thus:
The deal enables users of the Logitech® Squeezebox™ Duet and Logitech® Squeezebox™ network music systems to build intensely personal music profiles with Last.fm just by playing tracks on their devices. It represents the first time Last.fm’s unique scrobbling system - the ability for Last.fm to track what you’re listening to and recommend you new music based on your taste - has been made officially available via any hardware music product.
My real interest, though, is the future. I am really excited at the possibility of having this kind of connectivity and functionality managed via my mobile handset.
It’s a good few years away, I think, before we’re be able to dynamically stream music (reliably) from Last.fm accounts.
Or is it… If MusicStation can do it, why can’t Last.fm?
I suspect they’re busy running a million miles away from the mobile marketplace at the moment because of the huge fragmentation with both device and mobile operators still unable to get their act together.
But I could totally see a Last.fm collaboration on an Android-powered handset…
Errr Ewan, the iPhone has had a Last.fm client (supporting scrobbling over EDGE and streaming over WiFi) for a few weeks now although I’d love to see a client for S60 so I can stroll around town listening to my Last.fm recommendations over 3G.
Because of their open APIs it’s easy for anyone to create a Last.fm client (in fact, the streams are just standard shoutcast streams), in our livingroom my hacked XBox running XBMC has Last.fm built in, which is great for parties as I just hit “play my friend’s songs” and get a decent mix of tunes that appeals to most of the people present.
Posted by Dan Lane on January 7th, 2008 at 11:30 am.Oh I missed that Dan, fantastic, I’ll need to check it out. As for S60 — that’s what I was really thinking about — the masses unlucky enough not to have an iPhone are going to have to wait for quite a while before anything becomes available, right?
Posted by Ewan on January 7th, 2008 at 8:19 pm.Not necessarily, anyone with the right skills could create an S60 client
Posted by Dan Lane on January 7th, 2008 at 10:02 pm.