Thursday, 2 June 2011

Free last.fm for everybody with KLastFM



Update 1: CoboltFM and KLastFM are dead. Last.fm changed things for the worse and pulled the plug on free streaming for almost everyone. Believe it or not, most of the planet can't stream anymore even if they pay. Last.fm refugees can still stream custom radio stations from Grooveshark with Dood's Music Streamer.

Update 2: Liquid Bear still plays last.fm radio on Android.

Last.fm is great, except for one thing. Germans, english and americans can play last.fm radio for free, but the rest of the world has to pay. And even if you pay, you can only stream last.fm on your computer. Outside the UK, USA, and Germany even paying customers are not allowed to listen to last.fm radio on their phones.

Back when I used a Nokia with Symbian I used to listen to last.fm with Skyfire. This browser routes everything through an american proxy server and identifies itself as a standard desktop browser.

But on Android it's even easier: get KLastFM from the market (or straight from the developer) and you can stream last.fm on your phone anywhere on the planet.

 Which is how it should be. The internet was never meant to have borders.

 KLastFM is far from perfect. Its user interface is a mess, it has a very annoying banner ad that AdFree fails to block, scrobbling is a hit 'n' miss affair, and according to LBE Privacy Guard KLastFM tries to read my IMEI number (the ad banner is probably abusing it as an undeletable cookie). It also sucks your battery dry, but that's a problem of all apps that stream media from the web. On the bright side, KLastFM also streams last.fm radio to your phone without a paid subscription. Also if you're outside the UK, Germany, or the USA.

 Update: AdFree and AdAway now block the ads in KLastFM!

 • KLastFM (Opera Software)
• KLastFM (developer's site, in french)

 Update: for an even better alternative last.fm app, check out CoboltFM:

 • CoboltFM: free last.fm on all Android phones everywhere

Update 1: CoboltFM and KLastFM are dead. Last.fm changed things for the worse and pulled the plug on free streaming for almost everyone. Believe it or not, most of the planet can't stream anymore even if they pay. Last.fm refugees can still stream custom radio stations from Grooveshark with Dood's Music Streamer.

Update 2: Liquid Bear still plays last.fm radio on Android.


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3 comments:

  1. Christian21 November 2011 at 02:19

    Just for the record, there also is CoboltFM, which doesn't have annyoing ads and some nice convenience features -> https://market.android.com/details?id=com.coboltforge.dontmind.coboltfm

    ReplyDelete
  2. android underground13 December 2011 at 11:24

    CoboltFM was better than KLastFM when it worked, but Cobolt died.

    My copy of CoboltFM won't talk to last.fm anymore. Maybe last.fm closed the hole that allowed connections from outside USA/UK/Germany? KLastFM still works for me.

    ReplyDelete
  3. The Death Trip31 January 2012 at 05:53

    I confirmed it is working even in france!
    Android and internet are so awesome
    On my nokia i was using mobbler the last version before last.fm changed their listening options so i did not update and still got complete last.fm

    ReplyDelete

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