The new Last.fm is a far cry from the Last.fm that exists in many streaming music fans' memories. The revamped, free streaming music service, which is in beta, has a new look and feel that will make you long for the old version. Navigation issues and a lack of lyrics and live content have caused Last.fm to fall far behind our Editors' Choices, Slacker Radio and Spotify.

How It Works

Last.fm, now powered by Spotify (more on that below), specializes in suggesting music recommendations by the use of a free "scrobbler" music player plug-in that sends Last.fm information about the songs you listen to. Simply stated, Last.fm taps iTunes, Windows Media Player, and other desktop and mobile applications to learn which songs you like and suggest related matches.

For example, a Champagne In Seashells listening session via Windows Media Player resulted in Last.fm recommending other Liam Finn tracks, as well as tunes from Luke Buda and Pajama Club. I'm quite satisfied with those recommendations. Last.fm also built a station around these artists that aided in the discovery process. Interestingly, the custom stations lack skip limitations, which is highly unusual for a streaming music service. Most streaming music services let you skip six songs per hour using their free versions or skip an unlimited number of songs using their premium versions.

You can, of course, listen to music on Last.fm without utilizing the scrobbler by either keying in a search term or visiting the Music section. Sadly, you cannot browse by genre, but you can broswe by tag—if a song has one. If you type in "Wu-Tang Clan," Last.fm loads a page that displays a list of albums and a handful of tracks to sample. The Music section, on the other hand, lets you view or listen to the top 20 artists and tracks, respectively, that are popular in the Last.fm community.

Spotify and YouTube Integration

By default, Last.fm utilizes Spotify as its music-streaming source, but you can opt to stream from YouTube if you prefer that platform. If Last.fm is unable to find an artist or song in Spotify's library, it will automatically turn to YouTube for assistance—a nice touch.

That said, Last.fm's handling of the Spotify streams left me confused. In my testing, sometimes it played the music from within Last.fm's homepage; other times it attemptd to launch Spotify's desktop application. Oddly, Last.fm sometimes continues playing a track to its conclusion even after I closed the browser tab in which it ran. I chalk this up to Last.fm's beta status.

The Spotify integration is an unsurprising move. There's been a bit of streaming music consolidation in recent years. For example, Pandora Radio recently purchased Rdio, and AOL Music is now powered by Slacker Radio.