Last.fm Launches Native iPhone/iPod App

Last.fm has announced the launch of a Last.fm application on the iPhone and iPod Touch.

We are pleased to announce the launch of Last.fm on the iPhone and iPod Touch! Sam Steele, our iPhone development army of one, has been cranking away at a full blown Last.fm app on Apple’s mobile platforms for months now and the results are nothing short of insanely great.

To install Last.fm install it from AppStore on your iPhone or iPod touch or you can click here to open AppStore in iTunes.




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Log in or signup to Last.fm and you’ll be presented with a fairly obvious selection of Last.fm functionality. Things with the red circle icon start streaming. You can navigate through the menus and go back with the button in the upper left.

Once you start streaming something, you’ll have access to the familiar Last.fm contextual items (love, ban, skip… tagging will be in the next version). You can also check out the artist bio, similar artists and events (particularly cool). If there are current events for the now playing artists, you can specify if you’re attending or not and go to a Google map for the event location.

There’s a lot you can do in this app, but the interface is pretty slick so hopefully it will all be pretty discoverable.


There ARE a couple caveats…

First of all we are initially rolling this out in the US, UK, Canada, France, Germany and Spain. We’re looking at other locales but have to deal with licensing and a host of other issues. We assure you that we’re working on it.

Secondly, there are no background applications allowed on the iPhone/Touch. There are several implications to this, but what it mostly means is any time you click a link that loads Safari, the music will stop and you’ll have to restart the app. This means event maps, and bio links. We’re looking at alternatives, but for now that’s the breaks.

To end with a bit of icing, the app knows how to read lastfm:// links. That means if you’re browsing the Last.fm website on the iPhone and click a “play in software” link, the app will start streaming for you! It’s neat, you’ll see.
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