I've had my last.fm account for over a decade and a what.cd account for most of its existence. You're correct that they provided similar resources for music junkies.
You could probably recreate most of last.fm's (non-scrobble) data from sites like musicbrainz or discogs. It's definitely great for the reasons you mentioned, like recommendations and neighbors. But to be honest, last.fm is pretty bad at being a source for discography-type information. There's duplicate albums, incomplete album information, weird track names, etc. It's gotten better with their recent update efforts though. I love last.fm and will continue to scrobble and use it for music discovery. But discovery is only half the battle. You need to somehow find that 2001 release from that post-hardcore band in Ohio that only existed for a couple years. If it was anywhere, it was on what.cd, ready for your ears.
I would say what.cd had a significantly more unique offering. You could browse endlessly, bookmarking artists or albums to come back to later, or make your own collections. You could watch an artist or record label to be notified of new uploads/releases. There were comments on artist/album pages going back years, not to mention the forums which were their own trove of great musical discussion and discovery.
It had user-created collages of various themes or purposes, with hand-picked selections and staff recommendations. An elaborate request system existed where users could request albums (down to specific source and bitrate) and donate ratio "bounty" to whoever fulfilled the request. All artists had ranked tagging and a web of related/interconnected artists. Artist discographies were extensively curated, not only with full album lists, but with multiple version/formats/releases of each album.
I mean, any non-obscure album could easily have 10+ versions well-seed and available. You didn't just get "The Postal Service - Give Up", you got "The Postal Service - Give Up 2007 Deluxe 2LP Reissue Vinyl" in your choice of FLAC, FLAC 24bit, 320CBR or V2/V0 VBR -- or maybe you wanted the 2008 Korean Reissue with bonus tracks? Also available in multiple formats. Releases would be flagged and trumped if album tags were incorrect; elaborate ripping rules and guides were established; people posted spectrographs of new releases to identify transcodes and immediately flag anything not up to par. It was so serious.
Yeah, the key to What.cd was the obscure stuff, and the various releases for each, well, release.
It's stuff that just isn't available on iTunes, spotify, basically anywhere. And, unless the music industry actually starts cooperating, never will be.
You could probably recreate most of last.fm's (non-scrobble) data from sites like musicbrainz or discogs. It's definitely great for the reasons you mentioned, like recommendations and neighbors. But to be honest, last.fm is pretty bad at being a source for discography-type information. There's duplicate albums, incomplete album information, weird track names, etc. It's gotten better with their recent update efforts though. I love last.fm and will continue to scrobble and use it for music discovery. But discovery is only half the battle. You need to somehow find that 2001 release from that post-hardcore band in Ohio that only existed for a couple years. If it was anywhere, it was on what.cd, ready for your ears.
I would say what.cd had a significantly more unique offering. You could browse endlessly, bookmarking artists or albums to come back to later, or make your own collections. You could watch an artist or record label to be notified of new uploads/releases. There were comments on artist/album pages going back years, not to mention the forums which were their own trove of great musical discussion and discovery.
It had user-created collages of various themes or purposes, with hand-picked selections and staff recommendations. An elaborate request system existed where users could request albums (down to specific source and bitrate) and donate ratio "bounty" to whoever fulfilled the request. All artists had ranked tagging and a web of related/interconnected artists. Artist discographies were extensively curated, not only with full album lists, but with multiple version/formats/releases of each album.
I mean, any non-obscure album could easily have 10+ versions well-seed and available. You didn't just get "The Postal Service - Give Up", you got "The Postal Service - Give Up 2007 Deluxe 2LP Reissue Vinyl" in your choice of FLAC, FLAC 24bit, 320CBR or V2/V0 VBR -- or maybe you wanted the 2008 Korean Reissue with bonus tracks? Also available in multiple formats. Releases would be flagged and trumped if album tags were incorrect; elaborate ripping rules and guides were established; people posted spectrographs of new releases to identify transcodes and immediately flag anything not up to par. It was so serious.
It's a truly great loss.