Android: Now With 100% More Radio

January 24th, 2009 | Published in Technology | 5 Comments

Last week I mentioned a secret project involving Last.fm. Well today it was finally announced! Since late last November I, and several other open source android developers, have been working together with the official last.fm developers on an Android application that would leverage the full suite of Last.fm features. Today this app was officially released to the Android Market.

Not only does the application bring the full power of last.fm radio to the Android platform, but it also demonstrates the power of open source development in a commercial setting. When last.fm expressed interest around late November in developing an android application to be featured in the Marketplace, Google responded with an enthusiastic thumbs up but included a deadline of mid-January. A month and a half is an incredibly short turnaround time for a fully featured mobile application.

Last.fm contacted several 3rd-party developers who had already began work on their own last.fm android clients, and suggested that we work together and pool our resources. You can take a peek at the results below. I am proud of our product after such a short development cycle, even though there exist several outstanding bugs at launch time. We already have a slew of bug-fixes and feature additions in the tubes for another release.

Keep an eye out for posts announcing the opening of the site where the source code can be found, as well as bugs and feature requests submitted. Due to licensing issues the source code repository and issue tracker will be delayed several days.

(click for full image)

flo

I know that last.fm is only allowed to stream to some countries, but why is the android app not even available in the countries it streams to, or not even in the ones it still streams for free? As the situation is now, last.fm on my iphone (with another sim) does stream last.fm pretty well, while I can't even find the app in the german android market.
I know that maybe I can compile it with my own api key (it compiles but doesn't show in the emulator for some reason)
however as streaming via iphone and desktop is still available here, I don't really see why it should be blocked, so it would be really nice if you could comment on this. And yes, I do realize you are not custome support :)
Daniel Hahler

Thanks for having made this possible, I'm looking forward to using it.. :)

Source has been released at: http://github.com/mxcl/lastfm-android/tree/master
phoebe

Hi,
say, is there any possibility to download the application (or its source code) without having a G1?
thanks
Casey

Phoebe,

Not yet. The source will be released soon. The app uses a special last.fm API key that allows it to stream radio. This key must be kept secret due to licensing restrictions. This must be sanitized from the source, then we will open up the source for the world.

I do not expect the app itself (an android app package) will be released, again to licensing restrictions. Last.fm is only allowed to stream music in certain countries.

We're doing our best to make the app as open as possible.

Casey

Binary Elysium