threevue

As you may already be aware, some of us here at Threevue are big fans of Last.fm.  As some of you may also be aware, Last.fm is one of three new apps (joined by Facebook and Twitter) to be integrated into the Xbox 360 dashboard in an attempt to further blur the lines between games consoles and media centers.

For those who aren’t yet aware of Last.fm, it’s a music program which lets you listen to music of your choice, in full, online.  Not content with just doing that, Last.fm will also recommend music to you based on your selections, track your listening habits, provide pictures and biographies for the artists, as well as tour schedules for any touring artists, as well as having a burgeoning community.  On top of all of that, it’s also free!

As is, there are already a number of ways to use Last.fm; via the site, a desktop app, and an iPhone/iPod Touch app,  all of which vary greatly in their functionality; the website is the most feature-packed, whilst the iPhone app is extremely bare-boned.  As a result of this variance, I was naturally a little sceptical when I first heard that this service would be coming to the Xbox dashboard.

However, I finally got around to checking this out today (despite downloading it when it launched on the 17th), and I found myself pleasantly surprised at how robust this app really is.   This version of Last.fm allows you to perform the vast majority of tasks available on the website, plus a few more gamer related things that the site doesn’t offer.  It all works fairly well with the Xbox 360 controller too, though the ability to skip tracks with the triggers/bumpers would have been good.

There are some noticeable omissions though; whilst your listening habits are “scrobbled” to your website profile for tracking, there is no stat tracking functionality available on the dashboard app itself.  Also, the “on-tour” schedule is sadly missing from the dashboard app, as are all of the event planning functions available on the site.  I have personally found these to be really useful as a single-source way of finding out which bands are playing in my city, and when.  There also doesn’t seem to be any way of adding people to your Last.fm or Xbox friends lists through this app, which seems like a huge missed opportunity.

Regardless of these omissions, the Last.fm dashboard app still contains a host of worthwhile features, and is well worth checking out.  Of course, it’s debatable as to how much use you’ll get out of this if your Xbox and PC are set up in the same room, but if you do have them set up in different rooms then this could be well worth your time.