In May 2010, Last.fm announced the launch of Last.fm Festivals, a personalized guide to music festivals around the world. It enabled users to browse upcoming festivals in their locale or further afield, based on their personal music profile and, of course, their ‘scrobbling’ history.
Now, Last.fm has ported this functionality into dedicated mobile apps for iOS and Android devices, which is fantastic news for serial festival-goers with itchy feet. The only caveat is that they’re available in the US only for now, but the good news is availability will be extended across the world shortly.
The app features:
- Festival compatibility
- Festival recommendations
- Recommended festival lineups
- Learn about all the artists at any festival
- Browse or search for festivals
- Find festivals nearby or across the world
- View festivals that friends are attending
Last.fm’s recommendation engine is used to display festivals it thinks you should be attending, much in the same way it recommends new tunes to you:
The Last.fm database apparently has more than 130,000 events, and the app essentially filters this data down to around 4,500 upcoming festivals worldwide. Whilst the app’s real ingenuity lies in its recommendation engine, unregistered users can also search for festivals by name or artist, or find festivals nearby using GPS functionality or even by date:
And if you’ve been recommended a festival and want to learn more about other artists playing at the festival, you can easily access artist biographies too:
The app is compatible with Apple iOS devices running version 4.0, or Android 1.6+, and they’re available to download now.
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