As someone who used to hang out on various music forums...a human recommendation based on careful analysis of your last.fm scrobbles was infinitely more useful and accurate than anything Pandora/YouTube/Spotify/Tidal ever recommended me. Humans can infer not just what you like, but what you don't like.

To me, it always was the scrobbler. I've been tracking what I listen to for 15+ years.

Community largely died out already by 2012. Originally Last.fm enabled a lot of IRL socializing, connecting hipsters who lived in the same town and listened to the same music. Changes in music-listening habits, the atomization of tastes in a world where so much was available, and CBS not having a clue what to do with the site -- that killed Last.fm except for just a way to track one's own plays.

a recommendation algorithm that isn't a box of pain they sell to advertisers?