Can I Convince YOU to Make a Last.fm Account?? 🫵🤨

Um, context?

So I think in July of this year (that being 2025 I know I'm making this at the tail end so it might be 2026 by the time some of yall read this) I made an account for a site called last.fm and honestly I need more people to make an account so that I can see yall's music tastes.

Ok wait sorry I'm getting ahead of myself, I should explain what exactly last fm is

What exactly is last.fm?

Wow, I'm so glad you asked! Very basically, last.fm is a website that tracks the music you listen to and will show you various stats based on your listening habits such as your top artists, songs, and albums.

If it helps, it's kinda like spotify wrapped, except you can view your stats at any time during the year instead of just the end.

Oh also, there are various 3rd party sites that can use the data from your last.fm account and will show you other stats that the last.fm website doesn't show you. (I'll show some examples later in this blog)

Ok... but like... why do you want us to sign up??

Honestly, yall don't have to sign up if you don't want to, I just enjoy the website because it provides a convenient way to show off your music taste and gain insights about your listening habits.

This blog is more so to inform people about last.fm's existence and why I personally like the website, rather than explicitly trying to persuade yall to make an account (sorry for the clickbait)

But if I may try and persuade real fast...

For those who are moving away from streaming/are thinking about moving away/in the process of moving away from streaming:

For me, the real benefit of last.fm was allowing me to have something similar to spotify wrapped without having to, y'know, use spotify. From around March of this year, I started my own journey of building my own local, downloaded music library of files. I even use an iPod to listen to listen to these local files (although that's not required or anything I just think the iPod Classics look cool and wanted one for myself.) Although I don't mind the process of having to buy and download my music(and, honestly, even enjoy it a little), I can't lie that I was a little sad when one of my friends brought up how they can't wait to see their spotify wrapped and I realized I just wouldn't have a way to view mine anymore. I don't remember exactly how I found out about last.fm but when I realized it was a music stats website that'll let you import music from just about anywhere (as long as your dedicated enough) I immediately signed up because even when I used spotify, I still used websites like statsforspotify to check up on my listening habits before wrapped came out at the end of the year.

And for all my spotify listeners out there, don't worry, spotify actually has native last.fm support! After you make a last.fm account, all you have to do is connect it to spotify account from within last.fm :)

But yeah, with last.fm I didn't have to give up my favorite part about using a streaming service, which was being able to view my listening habits

For those who love everything about the 2000s:

From my understanding (as I was only, like, 8 at this time) last.fm peak popularity was in the mid to late 2000s, so for all y'all who love everything 2000s (as I know a lot of people do on this site) you'll be using a service that many people actively used back in the 2000s!

also i just enjoy looking at the types of music people listen to :P

Speaking of, I'd love for yall who do already have accounts to drop your usernames or a link to your profile so I can see what music yall listen to!

Seems pretty cool! How easy is it to set up?

Ok right, so there isn't just one answer to this question. How easy it is to track your music completely depends on what you use to listen to your music

I'll use myself as an example. For me I listen to music in a couple of different ways:

Foobar2000 (local files) on my computer
Local files on my iPod
Spotify on my phone
My own Plex server (streaming; iphone, tv, ipad, etc.)
Youtube Music on my computer

Now, you may have noticed that I felt the need to specify not only the programs that I use to listen to music, but the devices as well. This is because both of these will affect the ease of uploading your listens (known as scrobbling) to last.fm

For example, Both Spotify and Plex have a system where you can connect those accounts to your last.fm account and anytime you listen to something, it'll be uploaded onto the website. Very easy. Unfortunately, Youtube Music does not have this option, so I had to download a browser extention called Web Scrobbler so that it would count my plays. For my iPod, I have to manually plug it into my computer and use a program called Legacy Scrobbler in order for it to work.

The reason why the device is important is because, often times, computer versions of programs give you a lot more flexibility than their mobile counterparts. For example, in Foobar2000's desktop application, there is a system called components where users create plug-ins to add functionality to the base music player. (If that didn't make sense, think of components for Foobar like mods for a video game, it's basically the same concept). Since Foobar doesn't natively support scrobbling to last.fm, I had to install a component to get it to work. Unfortunately Foobar2000's mobile app doesn't support components and therefore it's basically impossible to scrobble from the mobile app.

All of this to say, depending on what program and what device you use, how easy it is to upload the songs you listen to will change. For spotify, after you connect your account, it's practically mindless. For others, you may have to find an additional program to do it for you, you may have to do it yourself, or it may just not be possible at all. (I recommend Reddit if you need to do research on how to scrobble for your specific use case.)

Wait, what about the 3rd party sites you mentioned earlier?

So true! Thanks for reminding me. Like I said above, by default, last.fm will show you your most listened to artists, tracks, and albums as well as a mini report of the music you listened to last week, as well the music you listened to last year (although I can't access last year yet as I only made my account this year 🧍).

However 3rd party websites give you different and more fun ways to visualize your listening habits!

Some of my favs include:

ScrobbleFlow

This is a website that lets you view your top artists, tracks, and albums but as a graph over time, rather than just an image like the last.fm page shows you

although i think it's a little broken right now cause that graph says from December 2024 but i didn't start using last fm till the summer of 2025 so idk what's up with that...

Explr.fm

This website combs through all the people you've listened to (at least those that you've put on last.fm) and will put them on the map depending on where they were born!

I love this one because I listen to people from all over the world so it's nice to be able to see it on a map :)

Last.fm Iceberg

This one shows you your artists but as you go further down into the iceberg, the artist get more and more obscure.

If anyone has read this far y'all should totally tell me the lowest artist you recognize in my iceberg.