Last.fm has teamed up with MUZU.TV today to bring over 90,000 music videos to the Web version of its Pandora-style Internet radio service.
The partnership will add relevant videos to each artist’s profile page, giving users a wider variety of content to ‘scrobble’ – the term coined by Last.fm to describe the act of recording a track as part of your ongoing listening habits.
The videos will be available to European users today, although the company says support for additional countries will “come very soon.”
Each artist page currently shows a short list of the top tracks scrobbled by users through the Last.fm service. Music videos supplied by MUZU.TV will be integrated into this chart – rather than being listed separately – and will also be available on the webpage assigned to each individual track.
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On the flip side, support for automatic Last.fm scrobbling will be added to the MUZU.TV website so that videos will always be recorded as part of users’ listening habits, regardless of where they are on the Web.
Last.fm is one of the only services that provides a comprehensive and seamless way of recording everything that you listen to. This data was originally used to recommend new tracks and artists to listen to, using both the Last.fm website and its dedicated mobile apps.
The service has since been integrated into other music services, particularly on-demand streaming alternatives such as Rdio and Spotify. Last.fm has never offered users this sort of control – instead relying on automated playlists similar to Pandora – and has lost some attention as a result.
Last December, the service practically abandoned this service in almost all countries except the US, UK and Germany. Web-based radio listening remains free in these countries, but it’s now a paid-for option elsewhere, as it already is in its mobile apps.
Last.fm doubled its efforts, however, by launching a brand new iOS app called Last.fm Scrobbler, as well as a striking new Xbox 360 app just last month.
The addition of MUZU.TV music videos is significant, but Last.fm needs a serious overhaul if it’s to stay relevant in the ever-expanding and evolving range of Web-based music streaming services.
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