Originally, it kind of worked like radio; it curated music for you, you could like, comment or skip tracks. It'd reinforce the algorithm, and you'd start finding great artists. I liked the Blues catalogue a lot, even though I was listening to reggae, ska, punk, etc. It just seemed they had the best music catalogue. I remember checking how big the catalogue was, comparatively with others, which was much smaller, but much, much better!

Today, we have Generative AI, generating an incomprehensible number of songs that no one will ever listen to.

I don't remember if I had to pay for Last.fm or not back then, but I'd definitely pay to have access to that old system.