Podfic and Last.fm

In October 2010, podfic fandom briefly panicked over concerns that podfics were being uploaded to the music website Last.fm. 
==Last.fm==
Last.fm users download a plugin or use last.fm's music player to allow the site to collect metadata from everything they listen to in order to get targeted music recommendations from the site. This data is all Google-indexed and visible to people who don't have accounts. A few last.fm users had listened to podfics, so all the mp3 ID3 tags of those podfics were grabbed and posted on the site. Some podfic listeners have their own system for organizing files, but others may not change anything, so the metadata on last.fm may represent whatever the podficcer filled in when exporting their file. The number (although not the identities) of listeners/listens is also tracked on the site. 
Musicians and labels who register on the site are allowed to upload their own music for streaming.
Pages are automatically generated for each artist, so there are pages for podficcers that include accurate lists of "similar artists" (other podficcers and, depending on how the fields were filled out, fic authors). Rhea314 appears to be the most popular podficcer on Last.fm, with 1,285 plays and 165 listeners.Rhea314 page on Last.fm as of 12 January 2015. Users are able to edit these pages to fill in additional information, but as of January 2015 it does not look like anyone has done so.
==Discovery of Podfic on Last.fm==
FayJay initially reported the issue to the Amplificathon community on October 19/20 as a case of archiving without consent. Writing about her discovery of podfic on Last.fm, she commented, "My immediate response, upon realising that my voice, reading explicit porn, was now available on mainstream streaming radio (of the "hey, you liked such-and-such a thing! So we think you'll like Fay's reading of this NC17 fanfic!" variety) was hysteria."FayJay. Fandom Etiquette: ur doin it rong., posted to Amplificathon 20 October 2010. (Accessed 12 January 2015.) A link to buy the mp3, which automatically appears on all song pages, also misled her into thinking that someone on the site could be selling bootlegged podfics. (See Fandom and Profit.)
Podficcers who were unfamiliar with Last.fm were outraged by the supposed uploading and by the exposure. When they realized that no actual podfics were uploaded to the site, only metadata, some people (including FayJay) were relieved. Some who responded to the post reported that they were users of the site and had changed their settings and/or deleted podfic metadata they had accidentally leaked to the site. However, some podficcers were still concerned that their fannish profile being more visible would lead to outing. Mundanes finding NC-17 podfic was particularly concerning. At least one podficcer decided to create a separate podficcing pseud. There was a podficmeta discussion about whether fans' voices would be enough to identify them.
==Parallels==
During the discussion, Paraka recalled the experience of vidders with YouTube:
During the December 2014 Goodreads wank, some podficcers noted parallels to the Last.fm incident.
==Meta/Further Reading==
*Fandom Etiquette: ur doin it rong. post in Amplificathon by FayJay; dreamwidth copy (October 19/20, 2010)
*untitled post in merlinpodfic by winkingstar (October 19, 2010)
*Fear of discovery post in podficmeta by brimtoast (October 20, 2010)
* Theft of Fanfiction Perpetrated by Cliff Weitzman, WordStream, Speechify (December 22, 2024)
==References==
Category:Podfic Fandom
Category:2010 Events