Hi,

I am registerd as a German user at last.fm. Of course I know that subscribing at Lastfm is nowadays required to listen to the streams. Exept, youre a German UK or US Resident.

Now there is a Quote from Lastfms developer blog:


#Updating developers using our Radio API: third-party apps that stream Last.fm Radio will have full access to the Radio API, so streaming will work provided #the user that logs in is a subscriber. (All other APIs remain free/unchanged)

For me, that was an absolutely clear statement that I can get Streams in Amarok, cause I AM  German. But I only can listen to the Streams if I am a subscriber. I subscribed today to test that.

Can anyone give me a link to a Page where the Lastfm People clearly say that

"Streaming through 3rd party apps will always require a subscription, where ever the User lives."

Thanks and Greetings


Jochen

Can't give me anyone Information about that?

As far as I know. This stuff was thoroughly discussed on the last.fm blogs.

- Nikolaj

Becha wrote:For me, that was an absolutely clear statement that I can get Streams in Amarok, cause I AM  German. But I only can listen to the Streams if I am a subscriber. I subscribed today to test that.

I think there is inconsistent use of the term 'subscriber'. I always thought of a subscriber as somebody that paid money, but either I was always wrong or it seemed to change somewhere along the way to be used more to describe what is accessible if you are signed up compared to what is accessible anonymously. And that does seem to confuse things a bit when describing features that require you to have a paid subscription in one locale, but can be accessed by a users with free accounts elsewhere and other features the require a paid subscription no matter where you are.

I can't really see how this affected third party developers. As a user I supply my user name and password and the streams will either play or access willl be denied, which is determined server side.

Comparing Amarok to the Last FM client in Ubuntu Karmic the same streams seem to be available/playable in both, and I don't think there has been a new Linux client for quite some time now, don't think much has been done to the Last FM client on the Windows side either for a while.

Later, Seeker

And are you a subscriber or not? Cause I can only Stream if I am a subscriber. But with the Lastfm CLient I can stream without a subscription......


Whatever.... I have no Problem to pay 3€ a Month as it will not raise up.


Grets

http://www.last.fm/group/Last.fm+Web+Se ... /_/8966064

Becha wrote:And are you a subscriber or not? Cause I can only Stream if I am a subscriber. But with the Lastfm CLient I can stream without a subscription......

I'm in the US.

I signed up for a free account, have never been a paid subscriber.

If I remember right, when I first signed up, the Last FM client showed you options for personal tag radio, loved tracks radio, and neighborhood radio, and only neighborhood radio worked with the free account. Tried last-exit and at least one other third party player, they didn't give me access to anything different than I got with the official player.

Currently the Last FM client shows me My Recommendations, My Radio Station, My Loved Tracks, My Neighborhood, and My Tags. Under My Tags it shows all the tags I have used and I can click one and the radio starts to play. If I click on a friend or neighbor, the radio starts to play.

I think personal tag radio used to only be stuff that you tagged yourself, currently My Tags shows only tags you have used, but I think when you click a tag to initiate a stream it plays the global tag, so is not limited to the stuff you tagged yourself. I initiated a stream for a tag I have only used a few times and it played, if it was limited to the stuff I tagged myself I would expect it to tell me there was not enough content.

If I click on My Loved Tracks, it tells me I have to be a subscriber, everything else seems to play.

Interestingly when I click on My Loved Tracks in Amarok it did start to play something, but when viewing my profile page it showed the track being played was not showing as a loved track and it indicates I am listening to LordDust's library, so maybe when you can't play something it falls back to the last thing you played? The last thing I did was randomly click on one of my neighbors in the Last FM client. Yep, if I click on one of my tags to initiate the tag radio, stop it, clear my playlist, click My Love Tracks to initiate that radio stream it falls back to the tag radio I just played.

There are other things that used to work and don't anymore, but these are things that would have been clicked on at the website to initiate a stream in the client and you now only have an option to use the player embedded in the website, not related to any recent changes in functionality/policy.

Could be other differences that I have not seen because it's stuff I don't use, don't care about, or didn't use enough in the past to know the difference.

I have several groups I have joined and still listen to the group radios on occasion, and yes this is one of them. But with the combined factors of not being able to open the group radio streams in the client anymore and improvements to recommended radio, my usage of group radio streams dropped off quite a bit.

Most of the time I am listening to my local collection and scrobbling the plays, if I stream more than 6 hrs in a week from Last FM that's a lot for me. About 90% the time (give or take) that I do spend streaming stuff from Last FM it is Recommended Radio.

Later, Seeker