Since 2002, the Last.Team has been questioning the relationship between digital content and digital context by utilizing a number of controversial technologies in an artistic environment. After more than one year, the result is a collaborative online music sharing and streaming station, which analyses a user’s individual music taste and puts it into context with all other users on Last.fm. Privacy and copyright issues are challenged in particular, because Last.fm provides sophisticated data mining tools and makes them available on an open data / open source basis.

Last.fm is an online music sharing and multicasting station which is utilizing ProfileNavigation, an innovative music navigation method based on profiling, collaborative filtering and recommendation technologies. ProfileNavigation is profiling users’ musical preferences on Last.fm. Last.fm connects users with similar profiles and clusters these users in micro communities with similar music-taste. This is the basis of a powerful music navigation tool: The user is able to determine the relationship between her / his individual taste and all other users’ taste. ProfileNavigation (profile-surfing) enables the user to jump in between these music-taste micro communities.

The sum of all profile clusters results in the Music-Map, which connects all music titles and users on Last.fm. It is the source for Last.fm’s open data. Every user on Last.fm has her / his own individual taste profile. She / he can share it with the Last.fm community. Last.fm is about sharing taste instead of sharing mp3s. Last.fm is about the context of music rather than the content.

Links: http://last.fm

Last.Team: Michael Breidenbrücker (D) studied electronics and information technologies at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna (Peter Weibel and Karel Dudesek). He worked as a freelance designer in Austria, Germany and the UK, as Director of the London based Secretforces and as Senior Lecturer at the Ravensbourne College in London. Felix Miller (D) studied Electrical and Mechanical Engineering at the Technical University of Munich before changing to Computational Linguistics at Munich University. Since 2000, he has been (together with Martin Stiksel) founder and director of the London based Insine Ltd., which is dedicated to innovative online music promotion and distribution concepts. Martin Stiksel (A) studied linguistics with a focus on English at the University of Vienna and Digital Sound and Music at the LCP in London. Since 2000 he has been director of NBAW Audiovisual Design Ltd. in London, England. In 2001, Martin started working for Ravensbourne College as a Lecturer where he is currently doing an MA in Interactive Digital Media.