User Account Management

What happens if I've forgotten my password?

If you specified an e-mail address during signup, please use the Password Reset form, and fill in your username and email address.

Alternatively, if you don't have an email address associated with your account, you can go to our Support Section and send us an email. Please remember to tell us your username and your date of birth for verification, to help prevent a fraudulent reset password request.

Can I change my username, or merge different accounts?

Sorry, but it is not possible for us to change your username.

Similarly, you cannot create a new account and choose to have your stats moved from one account to another.

How do I control who can send me messages on the site?

You can choose to allow everyone, only your friends or only your friends and neighbours to send you messages on Last.fm by changing your "Receiving messages" settings on the "Privacy Controls" page.

If you wish to not receive messages from any particular users, you can add their usernames to your "Ignore List" on the same page.

Can I block any particular users from sending me messages?

Yes, if you wish to not receive messages from any particular users, you can add them to your ignore list. To block a user, go to your "Privacy Controls" page, and from there enter their username in the field under "Ignore List" and click the "Add to list" button. The user will then appear in your ignore list.

To remove a user from your ignore list, click the "[x]" link next to their username in the list.

I want to delete my account, how do I do that?

Should you wish to permanently delete your account, you can do this on the "Data" tab in your settings.

From here, make sure you enter your password correctly, and confirm that you want to delete your account.

User Profiles

Can I delete a recently scrobbled track, or an artist or track from my charts?

Yes, you can delete recently scrobbled tracks – please read below how to do this – and any artist or track from your charts, by removing them from your library. Removing an item from your library will delete it and all its plays from your entire profile, including your charts. For more information on how to do this, please read here.

To delete a track you recently scrobbled, please go to your extended tracks list by clicking the "See more/Edit" link under the recently listened tracks on your profile page. You can remove items from this list by hovering over them, and clicking the "delete" icon when it appears.

How can I remove something from my library?

To remove an artist or track from your library, go to your library on your user profile and browse for the specific item.

Artist
To remove an artist from your library, hover over the artist’s image in your library – this will show you a little “Delete” icon on the image. If you click on this icon, a dialog will appear asking you to confirm the deletion (you can also cancel this if you wish to).

Note: By deleting an artist from your library, you will remove all its plays and all associated albums and tracks and their plays from your entire profile, including your charts.

Track
If you wish to remove a single track from your library, go to a listing within your library where this track appears – for instance under “Recently Added” if you added it to your library just recently, or the detailed page of this track’s artist in your library.

To go to the latter, click on the “(x plays)” link under the artist’s image/next to its name in your library overview. The following page is the detailed entry for this artist in your library, and to remove any of its tracks, simply click on the “Delete” icon which appears when you hover over a track. A dialog will appear where you are asked to confirm (or cancel) the track’s deletion.

Note: This will delete this track and all its plays from your entire profile, including your charts.

How do I mark a track as loved?

Simply click on the “Love” button in the player when listening to a track on the website, or use the dropdown menu next to a track in any listing.

You can also mark tracks as loved in the Last.fm software player, by clicking on the “Love” button when a track is playing.

Where can I view my loved tracks?

You can view a full list of all the tracks you have marked as loved under “Loved Tracks” on your profile page.

It is also possible to view and edit your last ten loved tracks in the software player – simply expand the “Recently Loved” list in your “My Music Profile” sidebar on the left-hand side.

P.S. As a subscriber, you can also listen to your own “Loved Tracks” radio – a station filled with all your favourite tracks!

How do I remove a loved track?

To remove a particular track from your loved tracks, simply select “Unlove track” from the dropdown menu next to this track in any listing on the website – You will see that this track then won’t be marked with a “Loved” icon any longer.

When using the software player, you can also remove a recently loved track by right-clicking on the particular track in the expanded “Recently Loved” list in your “My Music Profile” sidebar on the left-hand side, and selecting “Remove From My Loved Tracks.”

How do I choose who can see my Recent Activity on my profile page?

You can customise your Recent Activity settings from the "Privacy Controls" page. From here you can choose if everyone, only your friends and neighbours, only your friends, or nobody should be able to see what you've been doing on Last.fm when visiting your profile.

At first you're the only person who can see your activity. You have two weeks from the first time you see your activity to choose your "Privacy Controls" settings before everyone can see it.

You also have 30 minutes from the time you do something to delete its entry in your activity. After that time you can't delete it.

How can I add or remove friends?

To add someone as a friend, go to their profile and click the "Add as a friend" button below their picture. They will receive a message about your friend request, and will be added to your friends list once they've accepted the request.

You can view your own friend requests by going to the "Friends Requests" tab in your messages inbox. From here you can ignore or accept any friend requests you've received.

To remove someone from your friends list, go to your friends page on your profile and hover over their picture or username. A little delete icon will appear; click this and confirm that you wish to remove that user as a friend.

Artist Pages

How are the similar artists calculated?

The list of artists which you may see on an artist page as being "similar" is based exactly on our user's listening habits. If a lot of users listen to Artist X, but also Artist Y and Z - Y and Z artists will become similar to X.

With a few added constants and other functions thrown into the equation to help make it more accurate, you'll find that's how Similar Artists are made.

How are the images for an artist chosen?

The artist images are uploaded by the artists and labels themselves, or by you, the users.

To get an image to appear for that artist go to that artist's page, click on "Images" in the left-hand menu and select the option to upload an image.

After uploading your image, your image will appear towards the end of all available images for that artist. Official artist and label uploaded images will take precedence over user uploaded images. In order to get your image further up the listing, it will need to receive positive votes.

If you find an image you feel is inappropriate, or incorrect, you can flag the image. Once an image is flagged, a moderator can delete it if the image is wrong, inappropriate or of poor taste.

Is it possible to merge different profiles for the same artist into one?

It is currently not possible to merge different profiles for the same artist into one artist profile. For instance, if there are other profiles with different spellings of the name of a particular artist, it is not possible to have these redirect to the profile with the correctly spelled name. Please note that this also applies for tracks and albums.

That this works for some artist profiles, for instance that "Beatles" redirects to "The Beatles", is due to an older moderation system which no new moderations can be added to any more.

We are working on a solution to this issue, and we will announce when a new moderation system is in place.

In the meantime, please make sure that the music files you scrobble have correct ID3 tags, also as it is currently not possible to change the spelling of an artist or track name once scrobbled to your profile.

You can also help us to gather more information on the different spellings of artist and track names by fingerprinting your music, as this information will eventually allow us to know what the correct spellings are, and to moderate other entries for different spellings based on this. You can find some more information about fingerprinting in our blog.

And what about artists with the same name?

It is currently not possible to disambiguate artists with the same name, which means that if an artist shares their name with at least one other artist, they will have to share one Last.fm artist profile.

Please note that any other valid artist with the same name has the equal right to appear on such a shared profile, including their music, their pictures, their artist description and any other information on them.
It is for instance not allowed to remove their description from the wiki, and it is also not possible to have an official primary image for one artist, while there are other pictures for the other artist(s) which all users can vote for and thus decide which one of the artists should get the "main" image.

Scrobbling

What is scrobbling?

Scrobbling a song means that when you listen to it, the name of the song is sent to Last.fm and added to your music profile.

Once you've signed up and downloaded Last.fm, you can scrobble songs you listen to on your computer or iPod automatically. Start scrobbling yourself, and see what artists you really listen to the most. Songs you listen to will also appear on your Last.fm profile page for others to see.

Millions of songs are scrobbled every day. This data helps Last.fm to organise and recommend music to people; we use it to create personalised radio stations, and a lot more besides.

What if I'm using one of the standalone plugins or a third party application for scrobbling?

The Audioscrobbler standalone plugins are no longer officially supported by us. You are welcome to use them, but please note that we can't issue support for them should you run into any problems.

This also applies to any other third party plugins or applications, such as iScrobbler, Amarok or Rhythmbox. Due to them not being developed by us, we ask to you to get in touch with the respective developers or user communities should you have any issues or questions about such third party plugins or applications.

How do I scrobble my iPod?

You can scrobble your iPod with our software. Last.fm supports all iPods, Firewire and USB, including iPhone and iPod Touch. However, Linux iPod scrobbling does not yet support iPhone or iPod Touch.

Windows and Mac: To scrobble your iPod, you need to have the latest version of our software installed in order to use Last.fm for scrobbling your iPod along with iTunes 7.

To start using the Last.fm software for scrobbling tracks played on your iPod, you need to make sure your iPod is synced with iTunes.

The first time you connect your iPod with Last.fm installed, set up for your user account and running, a message will pop up near the Last.fm system tray icon to notify you that your iPod will be scrobbled from now on.

Disconnect your iPod, listen to some tracks, and connect it again. Now iTunes will sync with it and update its internal play counts with any new plays on the iPod. Once iTunes is done, Last.fm will analyse iTunes's newly updated play counts to find out whether there were any new plays on the iPod. This could take a while. If new tracks were found, they will be scrobbled to your profile.

By default you won't be asked to confirm your iPod scrobbles, but in case you always want to confirm them, you can enable this in the iPod section of the Options (Preferences on Mac) dialog.

Linux: You can scrobble with Linux using the “scrobble iPod” item in the “Tools” menu in the latest version of our software.

After you have synced your iPod with iTunes, iPod scrobbles may take up to 20 minutes to appear on your profile.

You can check your submissions history by going to your profile page, and clicking on the title “Recently Listened Tracks”, which will let you see your past submissions.

Here, you may notice that if you played a track multiple times on a iPod, all occurrences have the same timestamp, and all plays on an iPod Shuffle have the same timestamp. This is intended behaviour, and you can remove plays from this page as per normal.

iPod scrobbles older than two weeks will not appear on your profile.

Can I scrobble my iPod from any iTunes Library?

Automatic iPods will only scrobble from the iTunes with which they are synced.

Manual iPods can be synced from any iTunes Library, but you should only use one, as otherwise you will get duplicated scrobbles.

Can I scrobble from an iPod that is manually managed?

Yes. However, automatic syncing is still recommended.

Manually managed iPods require you to manually transfer tracks to your iPod using iTunes. You can only scrobble manual iPods after the first time they are synced with iTunes.

If you add tracks or change tags of tracks on your iPod after a sync, you should eject and plug in the iPod again to ensure those tracks will scrobble next time.

Whenever I scrobble my iPod, some tracks I listened to a long time ago get detected.

Check if any of these tracks have more than one entry in your iTunes library. If so, remove the duplicate and they should stop being picked up by the iPod scrobbler.

When listening to my manual iPod via iTunes, the tracks get scrobbled twice.

This is a known issue. For now, you can work around it by turning off real-time scrobbling in the Last.fm software when listening through iTunes. Alternatively you can enable "Always confirm iPod scrobbles" in the software's Options dialog, and then answer no when the software asks if you want to scrobble them.

The Last.fm Software

What is the Last.fm software?

The Last.fm software (also called "the client") is a desktop application which you can use to play Last.fm radio stations, scrobble your own music you listen to with your media player on your computer, and to edit your profile by tagging your music, loving and banning tracks, adding items to your playlist, and more.

What are the technical requirements for using the software?

Microsoft Windows
To use the latest version of our software, you need a PC-compatible computer running Windows XPor Vista. You can get the latest version from our download page.

If you are running an older version of Windows, for instance Windows 98 or 2000, we ask that you update your operating system. Alternatively you can use an older version of the software which you can download here, but please note that as this version is outdated, we can't help you with any problems you might have with it.

Apple Mac OS X
Our Mac client requires OS X Tiger and Leopard (10.4.0 and later). You can download the latest version from our download page.

If you use OS X 10.3.9, you can download an older version of the software here, but please note that we can't issue any support for this older version, only for the latest one. Unfortunately, there aren't any versions of the software available for OS X versions older than 10.3.9.

Linux
We also offer a Linux version of the client. You can get the Ubuntu Gutsy package from our download page here.

The client is also available as a source tarball and from Subversion. Details about this can also be found on our download page, towards the bottom.

Which media players does the software support?

Our Windows client officially works with the following media players:

• Winamp, version 5.5x
• Windows Media Player, versions 9, 10, 11
• iTunes, versions 6 and 7
• Foobar2000, versions 0.9.2, 0.9.4, 0.9.5

These plugins are downloaded and installed automatically via the client; simply go to the menu Tools > Get Plugin... and follow the instructions in the setup wizard.

Our Mac client works with iTunes. At the time of writing, there are no media player plugins for the Linux client.

What can I do if my software has stopped scrobbling my music?

If your software has stopped scrobbling your music, there could be various reasons for this. The most common ones are:

1) It cannot connect to the Internet to submit your scrobbles. Please make sure that your Internet connection is working fine, and that no firewall or no other security program is blocking the software.

2) It cannot connect to our submissions server, either because the server is actually currently down (please see here for its status), or because it fails to handshake with the server for some reason. In either case, your scrobbles are getting cached locally and will get submitted once the server can be reached again. You can check this in the Diagnostics dialog which can be found in the menu Help; on the Scrobbling tab, the status of the submissions server would be "Error: Could not reach server" in this case and it should list the cached tracks.
If your scrobbles are getting cached for a longer period, try forcing a rehandshake with the submissions server by clicking your username in the menu Account. This should trigger the submission of the cached tracks.

3) It might be that you don't have the correct plugins installed, or that you don't have them installed properly. Please check this FAQ for which plugins the software supports, and how to install them.

4) If you are using Windows Media Player, please make sure that the scrobbling plugin is enabled in the media player. WMP disables any third party plugins automatically if the program was terminated unexpectedly.
To enable the plugin again, go to Tools > Options > Plug-Ins > Category "Background" in WMP9, or Tools > Plug-Ins > Options > Category "Background" in WMP10, or Now Playing > Plug-ins > Other in WMP11, and tick the checkbox next to "Last.fm Plugin".

5) It simply might be that you are using an outdated version of the software, the media player plugin, or the media player itself. If supported by your operating system, we recommend you to use the latest versions of the software, plugin and media player in any case.

If this doesn't help you, please follow the instructions posted in this forum thread here.

If you still have problems scrobbling, please send us a support email, giving as many details as possible:

• Which operating system exactly are you using?
• Which media player and which version of it are you using?
• Which versions of the software and the media player plugin have you installed? You can look this up in the menu Help > About Last.fm...)

Do you know at which point the scrobbling process fails - does the music you listen to with your media player appear in the software player or not, does the Diagnostics dialog say that your tracks are getting cached, or is there no error message at all?
- Please use the "Copy to Clipboard" function in the Diagnostics dialog to copy and paste this information into the support email you're sending us. The more information you give us, the better we can help you to get your software scrobbling again.

What is fingerprinting?

Fingerprinting is a technique for analysing the actual audio content of the tracks you listen to in order to produce a unique ID for each song. This will allow us to identify and scrobble what you listen to without having to rely on ID3 tags and other metadata. It will also allow us to automatically figure out what the correct spelling of song titles should be and clean up our catalogue data.

For now, all that the desktop app does is collect the fingerprint data to bootstrap our moderation system. It does not change any MP3 files on your computer.

This does involve a slight CPU hit at the start of each track, and potentially a longer one later on in case it's a track we haven't yet fingerprinted in its entirety. If this bothers you, you can switch off fingerprinting altogether from the Scrobbling page of the Options/Preferences dialog.

Fingerprinting will identify the artist, album and song name only. Last.fm will not be able to identify the source of the song. We will not know if the song is from a CD or mp3.

Groups

How do I create my own group?

You can create your own group here on the "Create a Group" page.

How can I leave a group that I've joined?

To leave a group you're a member of, go to that group's page and click the "More" button at the top, near the group's avatar. Select "Leave group" from the dropdown that opens, and confirm that you want to leave the group.

What do I do if the leader of a group I'm a member of isn't around anymore?

If your group is in despair and needs a new leader, drop us an email via the Support Form, and it'll be dealt with accordingly.

Please include the following details in your request:

Group: The group name as presented on the site
Current Leader: The username of the current leader
New Leader: Whom you want as the new leader
Hierarchy: Specify how you want the new leader instated, as a co-leader, or a new leader with the removal of the old.

What can I do if I don't want to be leader of one of my groups anymore?

If you have a group you don't want to be leader of any more, you can pass the leadership on to another group member. To do this, go to that group's page and select "Abdicate" from the "More" button dropdown at the top, near the group's avatar.

On the following page, enter the username of the group member you want to become leader, and click the "Do it" button. That user will then receive a message asking if they want to become leader of your group, or not. If they accept, they'll gain leadership of your group (but if the decline, you'll have to stay around as leader a bit longer!).

What are the privacy options for groups?

When you create a group, you have the option of making it open for everyone to join ("Open") or making it exclusive, which means that all new members will have to be accepted by either you, the group leader ("Owner Approval"), or other group members ("Member Approval").

You can change these settings any time under "Edit Details", which you can select from the "More" button on your group's page. If you set your group to "Closed", no one will be able to join it any more.

Furthermore, you can control who can view and post in your group's forum and leave messages in your group's shoutbox, by choosing the respective setting under "Group Forum/Shoutbox Access" on the "Edit Details" page.

Can I delete a group?

No, it's not possible to delete groups. This is to prevent abuse.

However, our system automatically deletes groups once they're older than at least three months and have less than three members. The easiest way to delete a group you lead is to remove any other members, close the group by setting its "Join Status" to "Closed", and then remove yourself.

Events

How can I add an event?

If you wish to add an event, we ask that you search for the event first to ensure that it doesn't already exist.

If there's no entry for the event yet, go to the events page and click the "Add a new event" button in the top right, and enter your event from there. Please make sure to enter the correct details (date, venue, location, etc.) as not all of these can be easily changed afterwards.

Please note that abuse of our events system is forbidden and fake events will be deleted.

What can I do if I see something incorrect on the events system?

If you see something wrong on the events system, please report it to a member of our moderating team who will then see to the issue accordingly.

To report something, go to the event or venue page, and click on the "Flag for review" link at the top. From there, provide as much information possible.

If the item needs merging with another venue or event, please give the links to the duplicates. The more information that you provide, the faster the issue can be dealt with.

Wikis

What are the wiki pages?

The wiki pages are places where any member of the Last.fm community can edit the contents, in order to help build up better, and more accurate content.

The purpose is to provide a concise, and unbiased description of the artist, album, track, label, tag or venue. This can include for instance basic information about the person/group, the type of music they play, what they're most known for, when the album was released, when the venue was established, and any other relevant information.

What are the guidelines behind adding content to the pages?

If you see someone break any of these rules, please edit the wiki accordingly, and if necessary, notify a member of the Moderating Team

The following rules apply to all wiki pages

• Submitted content must not violate copyright. It's illegal to plagiarise someone else's biography of this artist.
• You can copy from Wikipedia, or any other GFDL-licensed source, provided that you enter the URL to the source in the sources box below.
• All submitted content remains copyright of the author, and is licensed under the GFDL.

Style Rules:

• This description should be written in the third person, factual and unbiased. No personal opinions.
• Please use the same language as the site you're using. If you're on the English Last.fm site, use English. If you're on the German site, use German.
• Try and keep it relatively short (a few paragraphs).

A copy of these rules are available on any wiki page if you edit the wiki.

What if I'm the artist/label?

Being the artist, or a friend of the artist, or family, or whatever, gives no special permission on wiki pages. The wiki is for factual descriptions of the artist only.

It's not a personal homepage and should not be treated as such. Anything outside of an unbiased artist description should be put on your "official" artist website, not in the wiki.

Labels/Artists will also need to remember to write in third person text (using "He/She/They" as opposed to first-person "I/We/Our"). As the wiki is open and editable by anyone, if a page has been edited by several different people, who is "I" or "we"? By using only third person text, the page is more open for editing by others, and the confusion over who "I" is can be easily avoided.

Why can't I add any opinions of my own to the wiki?

The point of the wiki is to give as much factual information about an item where possible. Opinions are not facts, and can often be misleading.

Should you wish to post an opinion of an artist, their albums or tracks, a label, a tag or a venue, you can use the shoutbox, group forums, or your journal.

I tried to edit a wiki page, but it says I can't edit it! Why not?

Some artists are subject to continuous abuse and style rule violations. When this happens, a moderator will lock the page to prevent any further abuse.

Locked pages are only editable by moderators and staff. Should a page be locked, the only means to edit it is to send changes in a PM to a site moderator that locked that wiki page. From there, they can then ensure the content does not violate rules and apply the edit.

There's more than one artist with the same name. How should the wiki page be done?

Until a workable solution can be found, artists with the same name are all on one page on last.fm. Start the page with a text indicating this, such as: "There are (x) bands with the name (band name):"

Follow it up with separate artist descriptions, with some kind of indication as to where the next artist's info begins. Normally this is done by numbering each artist description.

The word "brief" is particularly important on these pages when writing artist descriptions.

If you know there's two artists with the same name, but only actually know one of them, write the info for one, and start the second with something like "There is also second artist using this name." Hopefully someone who knows them can come in and add the info for them.

Artists are to be listed in the order of their popularity. To determine the popularity order, you are to use the Overall charts for that artist.

Under no circumstances is it appropriate to delete information about one of the artists to replace it with info about another. Deleting info about the "other" artist(s), or giving any one preferential treatment to the detrement of the others can be considered abuse of the last.fm wiki and will be treated accordingly.

Label and Artist Services

Why should I register my label or artist with Last.fm?

There are a number of reasons why you may wish to register your artist, or label, with Last.fm.

Last.fm is a powerful platform on which you can promote your music to the people that really matter. We can target people who like specific artists or styles of music within our massive global community. Last.fm is designed specifically to aid the spread of music through a large community.

By registering with Last.fm, you can get access to a number of features. To name a few, you can manage your music more effectively, view in depth statistics about your fans, and use a range of tools to help spread your music. All of these tools are highly valuable to both artists, and labels, and we believe that they can help the spread of your music to a much greater degree.

How can I get my music on Last.fm?

To get your music on Last.fm, you will need a labels account.

If you already have a Last.fm user account:
If you already have an account on Last.fm as a user, you can register now for an artist or label account.

If you're a first time Last.fm visitor:
You will need to register a labels or artist account from which to manage your music. You can register here. Once done, you will then be able to link up your music to your registered account.

Once you've registered with Last.fm, you will be able to add music to our radio streams, and manage your presence on Last.fm through our Music Manager.

Please note that the Music Manager is currently only available in English.

How much does all this cost?

It is free to register, add music and to use all of the main features of the Last.fm Label site.

We do have some advanced promotional features, however these are purely optional, and cost a minimal amount should you wish to use them.

Why is my artist or label already on Last.fm?

You may have found that Last.fm already features a page for your artist name and music. This is due to our user-generated content and software.

Last.fm collects the artist, track and album name of the music that its users listen to, and automatically creates a page on which the statistics for these items can be shown.

In most cases, finding that we have an artist page for your music does not mean that we have any of your audio files of your music stored on our servers for streaming or downloading. We simply have statistics that X many people listened to your music, and nothing else.

We would love to get you involved, and allow you to manage your music as you see best. You can register to Last.fm as a label - or artist - here.

I have more questions I want answered before I register my label, what should I do?

Should you have any further enquiries, you're more than welcome to send us an email. From there, a member of our Music Team will get back to you as soon as possible.

Please note: Please write your label/artist support requests in English only; we currently do not offer support in any other languages.

Where can I find your terms and conditions?

You can view the Terms and Conditions for registering to Last.fm as a label or artist by going to here.

Subscriptions

I just subscribed, but it doesn't seem to have worked. What should I do?

It's advised that you wait 24 hours before you get worried, as it might take a while for your payment to be processed.

If you are still not marked as a subscriber after 24 hours, please head over to the Support Section to send us a message, along with a copy of your receipt, stating clearly your username and confirming the number of months you paid for.

Where can I check how much longer I have left as a subscriber?

To see how many days of subscription you have left, please check the "Subscription" tab in your settings; you will find this information towards the bottom of the page.

Can I purchase a subscription for another user?

If you wish to purchase a subscription for someone else, go to the "Subscribe" page and simply enter the other user's username instead of your own one in the "Username" field, and then proceed as usual.

How can I subscribe if I don't have a valid credit/debit card?

If you wish to subscribe and can't pay by card, we also welcome payment via PayPal. To use PayPal to subscribe, select the option to pay via PayPal that is located above the email field on the "Subscribe" page.