One point about last.fm is that that the music is available in only certain countries, Canada not being one of those and I choose Wikipedia or IMDB (at times) to find an artist.
Fraser
· 2 months ago
Dean - good point. Some of the sites are more feature-rich for US visitors than individuals from other countries. I think the strength of Wikipedia is that it's accessible for everyone and (generally) info rich.
Steffan Antonas
· 2 months ago
Dean - Good call.
Fraser - I think the wikipedia phenomenon might be a result of wikipedia results consistently ranking high in search engine results. Just a hunch. Thanks for sharing this data. It's great to see what's going on under the hood!
Fraser
· 2 months ago
Agreed - check out the paragraph before the conclusion. It discusses this (with links to a diverse set of artist searches that return: (i) their site; (ii) wikipedia; (iii) myspace in the top 3.
Yet again (most likely) the power of Google on display.
Dean Gray gdeang
· 2 months ago
The music from last.fm is only available in certain countries, especially not in Canada. I use Wikipedia or IMDB to help look for artists and music.
vadadean
· 2 months ago
I wonder how skewed this data might be by music site data consistency. Not only is Wikipedia a rich data store, the data tends to be predictably organized / tagged. The high MySpace ranking might throw this right out the window. However, the lower Amazon ranking could result from Amazon's uncanny ability to confuse semantic engines with granularity and unpredictable data presentation.
zonalgman92
· 2 months ago
Another factor that may have influenced the results is that last.fm used to have a free version, for everybody. In the last 6 months people outside the UK have either had to lose access or cough up the cash for a membership. Also, I've noticed that for minimal info on artists that one hears on last.fm you get a short biog which names wikipedia as it's source for said info. Often I'll click on the link to get more in depth info, & album release dates, tracklistings etc. Sometimes that's when I'll notice the Glue Bar because I'm on the wikipedia page longer whilst still listening to the artist on last.fm
Dean Gray
· 2 months ago
From my understanding for the reason of last.fm not wanting to be in Canada is that Canadian regulations have tightened up in regards to file sharing and if I try to access last.fm I receive a message that last.fm is not available in my country.
zonalgman92
· 1 month ago
I see where you're coming from Dean but you cannot listen to last.fm tracks except on last.fm. The only trax you can listen to elsewhere are Free Downloads from artists who I guess either want to get heard or the music is in Public domain where you have same laws as UK I think. However if you get a msg saying it's not available in Canada, it's either as you say or there is no profit in it for them perhaps.
All Comments
Fraser - I think the wikipedia phenomenon might be a result of wikipedia results consistently ranking high in search engine results. Just a hunch. Thanks for sharing this data. It's great to see what's going on under the hood!
(with links to a diverse set of artist searches that return: (i) their site;
(ii) wikipedia; (iii) myspace in the top 3.
Yet again (most likely) the power of Google on display.
Also, I've noticed that for minimal info on artists that one hears on last.fm you get a short biog which names wikipedia as it's source for said info. Often I'll click on the link to get more in depth info, & album release dates, tracklistings etc. Sometimes that's when I'll notice the Glue Bar because I'm on the wikipedia page longer whilst still listening to the artist on last.fm
However if you get a msg saying it's not available in Canada, it's either as you say or there is no profit in it for them perhaps.