Why is lastfm a required dependency?

[Ralf Jung]

Hi,

> I'd like to point out soon Amarok's Context View will likely pull the
> majority of the artist information (like wikipedia now) from last.fm
> through liblastm. In addition, when we can no longer use Amazon as a
> source for album covers (August or September) the best alternative is
> last.fm (as has been discussed and decided on this list before).
>
> There is no reason why the Last.fm Service in Amarok can't be disabled
> if a user/distro doesn't want to include it. However, liblastfm will
> be used to power critical non-optional features of Amarok (Context
> info and Covers) in the imminent future.
Does this mean that a last.fm account will be required to get that information 
and a cover? That would be a huge drawback.
However if that information can also be fetched without being logged in, it 
sounds useful, especially if we can not get the covers from Amazon anymore. I 
just wished I had distribution packages for liblastfm now.

Kind regards,
Ralf Jung