Last.fm redesigned their website — Get used to it
About new Last.fm and why people should be more open minded about the changes.
Last.fm is practically a social media for music and one of my favourite sites. It scrobbles your listened music and creates statistics of your musical taste. I loved the idea when I first heard about it 10 years ago and I’ve been using the site on weekly basis.
I’ve been registered in Last.fm since 2005 and over the years I’ve noticed they do website redesigns between every 3–5 years. After all, redesigns are needed in order to keep up not only technically, but also design-wise. For a company big as this it’s not acceptable to be “stuck”, in a sense. When the front end base gets deprecated, it gets harder to do new brilliant things on top of it. I speak from experience as a web designer.
There has not been many versions of the designs, but the revamp has been almost every time something completely different. And every time the reaction has been quite negative.
If you take closer look at the 2005 version, first you’ll notice it looked a tad bit different. There were features like Videos which was left out from the main navigation in the next version.
The earliest screenshot of my own profile was found dated 2007, attached below. I liked the direction it was going.
The latest design before yesterday looked like this.
I liked the design. Wasn’t in love with it, but it was okay. By its markup and design it was getting old and clumsy. The most of all, I hated it wasn’t responsive. I wanted to check out bands and stats on the go and there really isn’t any good app for it. Besides, you shouldn’t need to install an app for just a quick look on the website.
The new site is in many ways better than the old one. I’m not concentrating on the issues right now, because I know there are many. I also want to change Artist — Track order and get my About info section on the right back. But that’s not preventing me from using the website, because I still love Last.fm and I like the new, modern design.
The feedback… come on people!
I laugh reading some of the comments. Some people are shouting their life is ruined and 9 years now down the drain. I hope most of the commenters are either kids or trolls.
Last.fm beta tested the site for a month or so. Had a quick look at it back then and it had a lot of bugs. Now, after the release there are still problems, but most of the bugs have been fixed. I know the guys are working really hard to get the upgrade complete and you can’t except everything to happen all at once. Nerds need sleep too and this kind of “feedback” won’t make their work easier. Nobody’s perfect and you would need hell of a bigger team with perfectionists and couple of more years if you require to have the site live only after it’s perfected till the end. And then you would be too late.
Feel free to stop using the site, nobody is forcing you. Most of you are using the site for free and subscription has been useless since the lisencing issues forced Last.fm to shut down the radio and Spotify got their share of the business. I would not be amazed if Last.fm would shout down their website completely over the years after Spotify takes over. I’m not hoping that, but that is one direction things could go to.
Some of the people have stated ridiculously naiive comments like Last.fm doesn’t care or they don’t read the feedback. How do you think it’s possible to read everything quickly when you spam the forums with multiple topics with the same subject? it takes ages to check out every god damn comment there is right now.
I’ve seen this many times, but it seems Last.fm users are more dedicated and have feeling-based reactions to the update. That’s fine. But it’s always like this when the companies with big userbase do a major redesign with their website or service. It takes time. Get over it. Get used to it. And usually you will. After couple of weeks you already forgot about this all so evil change that ruined your life.
If I would have more time writing this, I could have responded to the negative critic, but I have to start my work day with brilliant web designs of my own.
Now we can concentrate on how to leave a proper feedback.
