Shouts and general activity seems at an all-time low. Hopefully the new site in Beta will bring a few people back. I've set up an account if anyone wants to connect. I do 99% of my talking there.
It would be a shame to see the site disappear.

I terminated my account earlier this year (must be like the 10th time I've done that ). The new site would have to be a vast improvement in order for me to make a new account. I do like "collecting" scrobbles though, but I think I get bored after 20k or so.

I have no idea if that site is in decline or not since I only started scrobbling last May. I do realize that the shouts on most band pages are sort of non-existent, but I still see plenty of people using it and I get random friend requests/messages (not spam!) often enough.

Add another to your requests

@Perdition666 - the new site is very, very good. There's a full beta preview to members.

It's incredibly how persistent that site is in staying exactly like it has always been. All I can remember them changing in the last 5 years is the visual design a little bit, which is an eternity in internet time. They must have a lot of faith in their userbase remaining loyal while ignoring any and all suggestions for new features improvement of existing ones. What is this beta thing you mentioned? Another design change to give the illusion that they're still employing a programming staff worth speaking of?

http://beta.last.fm/about/whatsnew

It's worth a browse around. I like it.

I like last.fm. Even though it's a bit frivolous, I like to be able to see records of all of my music listening habits. In addition to that, there are a number of actual functional benefits. (The live music notifications are nice and the recommendations are just another way of exploring music) I also like the shouts and messages, even though virtually nobody shouts at me.

Fixed
Edit : Holy crap, I'm twice your age.

last.fm has changed a bit in terms of use. It used to be popular for social stuff back in the 00's but since then has just turned into a keep track of gigs, scrobbles and recommendations thing for most people seemingly.

I do use it, primarly to get recommendations and to keep track of gigs.

Yeah, I use it almost everyday and will soon hit 150k scrobbles. I find it pretty useful. My username's Begravelse if anyone gives a shit.

I have a few complaints- mostly towards the complete lack of moderation on tagging schemes, but it's a fairly useful site which I still use. www.rateyourmusic.com tends to be a bit better as far as that goes.

I still use it just as a scrobbler. Never bothered with the social media aspect of it. It's just interesting to see what I've been listening to in the last week/month/year.

Been using it since 07, it does seem bit more barren compared to back then, shoutboxes were teeming.

I haven't listened to a lot of music at home lately, but yeah, I've got one. And I've got quite a few albums on my to-listen list for the next few days...

I moved around a bit lately so I haven't listed to much music but I'm getting back into it. Always enjoyed last f.m as I'm kinda OCD about charts.

I've been using my current account since 2011. RIP my old account 2006-2011, even though I practically abandoned it in 2008/2009.

Still have it, still use it. I set up scrobbling on all of my machines/devices out of ingrained habit at this point and I enjoy periodically having a look at what I've been listening to lately. The events/recs features aren't of much use to me lately--facebook and bandcamp, respectively, have replaced these functions--so it's mostly for my own benefit/ego-stroking over my own shitty taste. I used to use it for social stuff some years ago but it really isn't very convenient for having sustained discussions. Occasionally I'll peek at someone's charts because I'm nosy but that's about it.

Just looked at the beta version and it looks nice--a little too slick/web 3.0/mobile-optimized for my tastes but whatever. Some weird bugs I've noticed over the years appear to finally be ironed out and the new data visualization stuff is nifty... apparently I've been scrobbling a lot less the last 3 years than I used to! Ah, the perils of physical formats and podcasts...

Anyway, I kinda doubt it'll change my habits with regards to using the site. It's mostly something that runs in the background/requires no effort from me and I don't see that changing.

I've been using it for about 10 years now - I would agree that the social aspect has declined somewhat although that might just be a reflection of the people I used to talk to a lot in the early days having less free time/losing interest. Still find it a very useful tool for event and band recommendations and tend to check it most days out of curiosity.

I deleted my old account some time ago and created a new one around a year ago. I scrobble all the time, and I generally view the site all the time too, but I've dropped out of the later recently because it seems like the groups I get involved in do nothing but create drama, and I'm pretty burned out on it.

I'd also like to add that I hate the beta version of site. It's clearly designed to appeal to mobile/tablet users. I don't own either of these devices, and browsing from a PC is frustrating in that they've made every page into a puffed up scrollfest with excessively large text and images when viewed from a desktop.

I understand it makes them more legible from a smartphone screen, but it's just annoying when I have to scroll down 20 times on a PC to see a page from top to bottom because everything is so big... Also, I'm going to be really disappointed if I lose my neat logo banner... :[

My new username is "high_as_bells" if anyone's interested. Feel free to send a friend request or something if you had me as a friend on my old "the_raytownian" account. Just know that I'm not really the sort of person to initiate conversations, so I probably won't have much to talk about unless you do.

I still use it for a number of reasons. I've had an account for a few years now.

I don't mind the fact that they don't change much. The site is functional, easy to use and navigate, and looks relatively sleek. Though I don't care as much for scrobbling as I once did, I still always have the scrobbler open on my computer. A reason for my recent lack of interest may be because I recently got an entirely new stereo with new record and CD player, so I haven't really been listening to much music on my PC for the last few months.

I've always likes the "similar artists" feature. I know many sites have this feature, but I've always found Last.FM's to be pretty accurate, probably because it's actually directly linked to people's actual listening habbits. I also like to visit band profiles to assess the band's popularity, although this is often distorted because some forms of music really doesn't have that many last.FM users.

only ever used it for the similar artists feature, nothing else seemed accurate or useful.

MA could certainly stand to improve its'. when a similar band doesn't even show up in the list unless 4 other people stumble across the same band and see the similarity and bother to add it, it's pretty slim chances a good archive of similar artists will develop, which does fans and the similar but less well known bands no favors.

Yup, still do. I don't mingle much with folks, but always keep an eye on the recommendations, because it has brought a number of cool artists to my attention and, while I don't do that much listening on my computer, it's still a fairly accurate measure of what I'm currently listening to and it's nice to see the charts every once in a while.

I like it - the gig recommendation feature is useful (would've missed Solstafir playing near me, for example). Plus, as someone mentioned, the OCD charting is fun, as is having those moments of 'let's delete that and pretend I didn't listen to it ten times over...'

Nah I can't be arsed with that site, the similar artist feature is good but the rest is annoying/clunky/slow.
I never scrobble, random friend requests, annoying unhelpful staff, backwards rules, multiple bands with the same name skews your band lists
If it wasn't for the similar artist feature I'd just flat out say the place sucked

It's kind of cool that you can see your musical compatibility with others but here at MA we're all into metal so yeah...

Yep, mainly for the stats but sometimes the similar artists feature is helpful. Hopefully they don't fuck it up too much.

I "use" it, if you could even call it that. I poke my head in every now and again to see what my stats are looking like, but I've started listening to music less in general over the past year or two, which has helped me become less hooked on it. It's probably for the best, honestly - there was a period where I was addicted to checking my stats. I would notice an artist on my charts, remark that their low playcount didn't accurately reflect how much I liked them, and start subconsciously listening to them more. I feel like the website functions better as an accurate representation of my tastes when I forget it exists and stop trying to polish it up like some sort of monument to my tastes in music. I've heard several of my friends report having the same experience, and I guess that's the irony of the website: if you want it to do its thing correctly, you kind of have to stop remembering to visit it.

Oh, but the recommendation feature is pretty fuckin' great. My love of 70s folk can be wholly attributed to last.fm's recs.

Been using it since 2011, though that account is long gone and I recently reset my current one just to let it ride with whatever I feel like listening to rather trying mold my charts to like, super accurately reflect my tastes. I still visit it every now and then, usually for the similar artists feature/recommendations and the odd time to check my stats out of curiosity, though I've drifted more towards RYM for the former as of late.

Also, for whatever reason the beta site reversed the reset on my account

It is just the beta, of course. It shows my account with an old avatar in beta (it did last I checked, anyway). I think they probably used some previously backed up data to populate certain parts of the beta site... or whatever... IDK anything about web design, but it seems like a logical enough conclusion.

Regarding RYM... I just can't see what others seem to see in it.

In my time dealing with RYM-obsessed users on last.fm, I've come to the conclusion that there are quite a lot of people on RYM who simply rate every single thing they've ever listened to once on youtube and then make lists based on their poorly-informed speed runs of albums in order to seem like some sort of musical authority. It's really unintuitive in my experiences with trying to simply catalog my music collection on there as well.

I'm sure it's got plenty of potential, but it seems like a lot of its users are into it for all the wrong reasons, and that, coupled with how unnecessarily complicated they make cataloging your music collection, has soured me on it.

Try as I might, I can't convince any of those RYMers to come over to Discogs. I'm going to be curmudgeonly and assume it's because they don't even own 10% of the 5,000 albums they've rated.

I still use it everyday since I downloaded it too to my smartphone. I use to listen to music every day while I am working.

I remember when the Last FM radio was free, there were full of good new bands to discover and I even made a few friend who added me to their facebooks.

If anyone is interested, feel free to add me:

www.lastfm.es/user/Atarrabi

I don't actually have an account but aside from listening to samplers with some genres it's the best way to find some new bands. I wish you could just browse all the bands ever tagged with a certain tag though, if they'd add this feature LastFM would be a goldmine, now you just get to see some popular bands if you click a tag, frustrating!

Haven't used it in years. Nowadays I tend to listen to metal via YouTube and Bandcamp, and that's not worth trying to scrobble.

Sure, but you already see bands like Suicide Silence being tagged A LOT with grindcore. Some people are just wrong about genres, and if you're looking for black metal and end up finding something like Bombs of Hades, you wouldn't be any better off.

^ yeah, for that reason you can't rely on it. Mine recommended me Papa Roach on the basis of Dissection... cool if they also recommend Dissection to anyone listening to Papa Roach (is anyone actually doing that anymore?) but yeah.

Also, I think the scrobbler is great because it's a much more genuine snapshot of your favourite albums than those "pick your favourite albums" lists, especially as you get further and further down the track. I find if I'm left to my own devices I'll list albums that I *want* to be my favourites, but in reality I never listen to. For instance, I've always listed Nightfall in Middle-Earth as one of my all-time top 10s, but according to last.fm (which scrobbles everything except my mp3 player, which I only use when jogging) it's not even in the top 50.

my poor friend request forever in limbo

I am, like, the worst.

I use it to scrobble a chunk of my plays. It's impossible to catch all of my plays considering I use CDs a lot, but it gets the majority of them. I think it's a really neat thing to be able to see my listening patterns over the course of 5 years, 10 years, etc. So I'll continue to scrobble as long as the site is up and running. As for using last.fm for anything but that, meh not so much. An occasional shout here or there, but that's about it.

I still use it. I don't know any other big enough website where I can collect music scrobbles and stats based on what I listen to. And it still has the best music recommendations after all these years. Spotify still has things to learn in that regard.

As for the community, I couldn't care less about it. I just have some friends to know what they listen to in hope of discovering new music in other genres. Also, the compatibility feature is flawed. Just because I happened to scrobble a few artists a couple of times, does not make our compatibility extremely high. Compatibility should be based on the overall genres and kind of music you listen to and how often you scrobble/listen to certain artists, and not just strictly based on the fact that you've scrobbled the same artists once or twice before. it's very misleading.

Is the "new" last.FM gonna change anything besides its interface/look?

I use it all the time. I've always liked stats and it is a decent site for finding new music.

I hate it , my friend always find to cheat to boosssssstttttt his scrobble.

I deleted mine when they "upgraded." Are half the features still missing?