In general, one wishes last.fm spent more time figuring out these basics — how can we track as much of the music people are listening to as possible — instead of playing with things like ‘where can we put a cute little folding corner with a trashcan below it in place of a red x?’

I have gone through the ups and the downs as the site has changed and they’ve added more features (some of which I had not asked for). However, as you mention, this site should be about gather your listening and sharing with others. However, basic issues remain with this. Personally, I would like it to capture iPod listens better. Currently, if you sync your iPod after you’ve listened to another song on your CPU, it triggers the spam alert suggesting that the submission could not be valid as it came prior to the last submitted track. This is just dumb. As an iPod track is time stamped, how difficult would it be to figure this out?
Additionally, under the new design it is far more difficult to see your weekly suggestions; a tool that I have used to find many new artists.
Lastly, it should capture Rhapsody and also streaming content as well. Why is it that it will capture a simple podcast, while it wont capture streaming XM radio? That makes no sense to me.

I honestly believe that last.fm COULD be the next hot web 2.0 company. But they are not capitalizing on some of the enormous goodwill the do have. I am sorry, but they need to put the arrogance away and realize that sites need to respond quickly to their userbase otherwise they will end up being passed over. Look at Friendster. Circa 2003 it had all the buzz… however they made some enormous blunders while upstarts like myspace and facebook took over.

Fascinating blog!