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Attention Fire.fm users: the people at Last.fm decided to limit free radio streaming to the United States, UK and Germany. Users in other countries will have to pay a subscription in order to use the radio service again. Also, Last.fm stopped allowing anonymous radio access, and you'll have to log in to Last.fm before you can use Fire.fm radio, in all countries.

Fire.fm Help - Frequently Asked Questions

Basic information and features

• What is Fire.fm?
• How do I get started?
• What is Last.fm?
• Do I need to have an account in Last.fm to use Fire.fm?
• Is the Fire.fm toolbar necessary? Can I remove it or change it?
• Where are the pause, rewind and forward controls? What is this, the Middle Ages??
• What is Scrobbling?
• How do I change my preferences /settings / options for Fire.fm?
• How do mouse gestures work on Fire.fm?

Frequent problems

• I log into the Last.fm site, but Fire.fm doesn't recognize me as logged in, the buttons appear greyed-out. How can I fix this?
• Why do I always see "No more content available" when I try to load My Recommendations or somebody else's station?
• I get "Communication failed" every time I try to load a station. What is going on?
• If I try to play a station with Fire.fm, the Last.fm desktop program is opened instead. How can I change this?
• I get one of these messages: "Fire.fm was unable to contact Last.fm." or "Fire.fm is being blocked by a security application in your computer or network". What do I do?

General help

• Fire.fm is not working, I need help! What do I do?
• How do I uninstall Fire.fm?
• I love Fire.fm! What can I do to help?

• What is Fire.fm?

  Fire.fm is a Firefox extension aimed at bringing you and Last.fm closer together. Fire.fm adds a new toolbar to Firefox, from which you can start last.fm stations quickly and easily. Listen to music related to your favorite artists, and discover new artists and music in the process. Listen to your friends' favorite music. Find Last.fm users with musical taste similar to your own. Quickly access your favorite stations by just typing a few letters into the location bar.

  See our Quick Tour video in the Quick Guide page for an overview of what you can do with Fire.fm.

• How do I get started?

  Go to the install page for instructions on installing Fire.fm.

  Once you installed Fire.fm, go to the Quick Guide page to see how to begin using Fire.fm. It includes a video with an overview of Fire.fm's features. Don't skip it!

• What is Last.fm?

  From the Last.fm Help pages:

  Last.fm is a service that keeps track of what music you listen to, and then produces a large number of features personalized to you. You can use Last.fm to listen to music, find out about artists you may like, other people with similar music taste, gigs in your local area, charts and quilts for your personal site, as well as much more.

• Do I need to have an account in Last.fm to use Fire.fm?

  Yes, although this wasn't always the case. Read the message at the top of this page for more information.

• Is the Fire.fm toolbar necessary? Can I remove it or change it?

  No, you don't need the toolbar in order to use Fire.fm. You can hide it from your main menu, at View > Toolbars > Fire.fm. Just click on it and the toolbar will hide. You can access all of Fire.fm's features from the main menu, at Tools > Fire.fm.

  You can customize the Fire.fm toolbar just like most Firefox toolbars! You can mix and match as you please. This way you can have your frequently used Fire.fm features available without having one whole additional toolbar. More about customizing toolbars.

  But wait, there's more! You can move Fire.fm's player controls to the Firefox Status Bar, right at the bottom right corner of your window. This saves a lot of space, and you can customize what buttons to show in it. Open the Fire.fm preferences window and look into the 'Appearance' tab. You'll find everything you need.

• Where are the pause, rewind and forward controls? What is this, the Middle Ages??

  Well, this is radio, so we're afraid you can't have those. Last.fm has restrictions it has to follow in order to provide you with their service. We are bound to those restrictions as well.

• What is Scrobbling?

  From the Last.fm Help pages:

  Scrobbling a song means that when you listen to it, the name of the song is sent to Last.fm and added to your music profile.

  Fire.fm has Scrobbling enabled by default. All you need to do is be logged in.

• How do I change my preferences /settings / options for Fire.fm?

  The way that works for all Firefox extensions is the following:

  1. On the Firefox main menu, select Tools > Add-ons.
  2. Find the extension in the list and select it (click on it).
  3. You should see an Options button. It is labeled Preferences on Mac OS X and Linux systems. Clicking on it will open the preferences window. The button will be disabled if the extension doesn't have a preferences window (Fire.fm does).

  Fire.fm has a quicker way to access this window. On the Firefox main menu, select Tools > Fire.fm > Options... (the menu item is labeled Preferences... on Mac OS X and Linux systems). This opens the Preferences window.

• How do mouse gestures work on Fire.fm?

  Mouse gestures is a feature introduced in Fire.fm 1.3, works on Firefox 3.5 and above, and only on computers that support multiple finger gestures, notably recent models of the Macbook.

  Fire.fm supports the following gestures:

  • 3-finger swipe right: skip to next track.
  • 3-finger swipe up: increase volume.
  • 3-finger swipe down: decrease volume.
  • 3-finger swipe left-right-left: ban track. This one is a little tricky to prevent triggering it accidentally.

  You can enable mouse gestures for Fire.fm in the Preferences window.

• I log into the Last.fm site, but Fire.fm doesn't recognize me as logged in, the buttons appear greyed-out. How can I fix this?

  First of all, make sure the Station button is disabled. This is the button in the middle of the toolbar with waves pointing up. If clicking this button doesn't do anything and you can see yourself logged in on the last.fm site, continue reading.

  Fire.fm uses cookies to detect you are logged into the Last.fm site. In your Firefox Preferences, in the Privacy tab, you should at least allow cookies from "www.last.fm" and "ext.last.fm" (Allow for Session is good enough). If you use a cookie filtering extension, you'll need allow those 2 as well.

  This is all default Firefox behavior, so you shouldn't be having this problem unless you changed something, be it manually or with an extension. If you still experience this problem, please file a Support Request.

  Update: There have been many reports of this problem since the release of version 1.3. We're still investigating it, but there are a few things you can try.

  Some have reported that the .NET Framework Assistant add-on from Microsoft is to blame. This add-on is installed via Windows Automatic Updates, and it isn't easy to disable. Given that it has caused multiple problems with other add-ons and Firefox, Microsoft has provided the instructions on how to remove it. Please be careful with these steps, and don't do them if you don't understand what you're doing. Get back to us if you do, and let us know if they worked or not.

  If nothing works, you can always downgrade to version 1.2.5. Ignore all update requests for 1.3, and stay put for new updates.

• Why do I always see "No more content available" when I try to load My Recommendations or somebody else's station?

  Last.fm generates playlists tailored to your music taste using the Scrobble data you send to them while using Fire.fm or their site player. In order for Scrobble to work you must be logged in to Last.fm, and you also need to set Firefox to Remember your Last.fm password.

  It takes Last.fm a few days of music listening before it can generate a good recommended playlist for you. Use Fire.fm frequently and try every few days, you'll eventually get some recommended music! Same goes for your friends with no content :)

• I get "Communication failed" every time I try to load a station. What is going on?

  Most 'Communication failed' problems are due to Last.fm's newly placed content restrictions. Read the message at the top of this page for more information.

  There may be incompatibilities between Fire.fm and content-blocking add-ons. Fire.fm loads a local Flash player in the background to play tracks from Last.fm, and some content filters may block it.

  If you're using add-ons that conflict with Fire.fm, please file a Support Request. We're very interested in finding and fixing all of these issues.

• If I try to play a station with Fire.fm, the Last.fm desktop program is opened instead. How can I change this?

  There's a setting you can change on the Last.fm site in order to fix this problem. Go to http://www.last.fm/settings/website/ (log in if you have to), and click on the option "Play music in-page".

  We will fix this problem in a future version of Fire.fm so that you don't have to change this setting.

• I get one of these messages: "Fire.fm was unable to contact Last.fm." or "Fire.fm is being blocked by a security application in your computer or network". What do I do?

  First of all, make sure you have the latest version of Fire.fm installed. To update Fire.fm, follow these instructions:

  1. Open the Add-ons Manager window. From your main menu, select Tools > Add-ons.
  2. Select the tab labeled "Extensions".
  3. Click on the "Find Updates" button at the bottom of the window. This will tell you if you need to update Fire.fm.
  4. If you see a Fire.fm update, install it and restart Firefox.

  Continue reading if updating doesn't solve your problem.

  You may get this error message if there are communication problems between your computer and Last.fm. Go to http://last.fm and try to play a station on it. If it doesn't work, then you should look into your firewall and network configurations. It's also possible that Last.fm or some part of it is temporarily down. Try again later to see if the problem continues to happen.

  Continue reading if you can play music on Last.fm just fine and keep getting this error message.

  Fire.fm loads a local Flash player in the background to play tracks from Last.fm, and some security applications such as antivirus or firewalls may block it because they consider it a possible security threat. Rest assured that Fire.fm is completely safe to use, as guaranteed by Softpedia.

  We do not advice you to disable your security tools, but there are usually ways to introduce exceptions to them so that you can use Fire.fm without problems. We'll update this section with information on how to enable Fire.fm on different security tools, but we need your help in order to do it.

  Please send us an e-mail to firefm-support@lists.sourceforge.net. Give us as many details as you can about your system: operating system, system language, security tools, and other add-ons you have installed.

• Fire.fm is not working, I need help! What do I do?

  There are two ways to contact us for help. You can file a Support Request or you can send us an e-mail to firefm-support@lists.sourceforge.net. Be as descriptive as possible when explaining what is not working, and under what circumstances it isn't working. We appreciate your help in improving Fire.fm.

• How do I uninstall Fire.fm?

  If you're planning on never using Fire.fm again on this computer, we recommend you first open the Fire.fm Preferences window (how to do that?) and click on the "Clear Fire.fm History" button. You won't need it anymore.

  If you were displeased with anything about Fire.fm, or it didn't work at all for you, please take some time and file a Support Request or send us an e-mail to firefm-support@lists.sourceforge.net. We appreciate your feedback.

  To uninstall Fire.fm (or any extension, for that matter), follow these steps:

  1. On the Firefox main menu, select Tools > Add-ons.
  2. Find Fire.fm in the list and select it (click on it).
  3. You should see an Uninstall button. Clicking on it will uninstall Fire.fm. You need to restart Firefox for the uninstall to take effect.

• I love Fire.fm! What can I do to help?

  Fire.fm is developed and offered for free by a team of 2 volunteers. The best way you can help us is by making a monetary contribution to our project. We appreciate any and all contributions, small as they may seem to you.

  You can also learn more about us and our project in our developer profile page.