Joystiq Interview: Last.fm on Xbox Live
From xbox.joystiq.com:
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Read Yeung’s take from the Last.fm side of the deal, as she discusses a range of topics, including why her company is better than Pandora, its social media plans, and how audio scrobbling works in APB.
* Is the Last.fm functionality that’s coming to Xbox Live the same functionality you get on the website? Previously, there was a rather wonky way to access Last.fm through the Media Center. What about now?
* A little bit of yes and no. I think, yes, it will be the Last.fm experience that users are accustomed to, and that idea of the recommended music and the personalized radio stations, and as per our new radio page, that kind of multi-sensory visual experience. So that will be the same in terms of the core experience.
I guess what will be different is obviously we are going to work with Xbox and take advantage of being on another platform and take advantage of what that platform offers. And secondly, because it is in the living room now versus on your PC, it is going to have a different user interaction experience. So all those things will be optimized for it to be on the Xbox platform and be in the living room, but ultimately it is that Last.fm experience that our users, and probably now new Xbox users, value.
* Will the service be available to all Xbox users, or is it specific to certain regions? We’re guessing it’ll be available in the UK, since Last.fm is based in the UK …
* Right. Last.fm is a global service, so we will be available in the US. We are obviously looking at other territories as well, given both the brands are quite global in nature, but that has yet to be determined.
* Will you be able to log into Last.fm on your computer and see if any of your friends there are also Xbox Live users, and vice versa? Will your accounts be tied together?
* That is definitely really interesting, and that is definitely one of the reasons why Xbox is so attractive to us in the first place, because there is that big community angle to Xbox Live. And as you know, the platform is community driven. So in the future, being able to really marry those communities more and have that be transparent is definitely
something that we want to think about.
But in the first iteration of this experience, it is really about getting Last.fm up and running in an appropriate way for that living room experience. So those types of community integrations, we know we have talked about it obviously, and it is something that seems obvious that we should be doing in the future, but that really will not be in the first implementation.
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Full Story: xbox.joystiq.com
