Filed under: Audio, Internet, Web
Last.fm to charge international users a subscription fee
Online music streaming service Last.fm is about to begin charging users in all but three countries a subscription. If you don't live in the US, UK, or Germany, you'll be able to listen to up to 30 tracks as part of a free trial. after that, you'll need to shell out €3.00 each month to use the service.Last.fm, which is owned by CBS works with thousands of musicians, labels, and others to secure the rights to stream music in the US and internationally. But either Last.fm is getting greedy, or someone at the company realized that the cost of streaming music and paying for license fees in all of those countries was too high and Last.fm needs to find some way to pay its bills.
Last.fm competitor Pandora pulled the plug on all of its international streams in 2007 and 2008.
[via Mashable]
Get a WordPress.com Blog
So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do.
Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game.
The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Tim Schönfeld said 2:40PM on 3-24-2009
FINALLY we in germany are not getting screwed when it comes to one of these services... still sucks
Reply
Nic said 2:54PM on 3-24-2009
Won't people just use Pandora? Seems like a good way to lose customers. Although I really don't think that they have ads or anything like Pandora does...
Reply
Tim Schönfeld said 3:07PM on 3-24-2009
äh... pandora only works in the us. thats the problem. thanks for not reading the article before posting.
Reply
Ethan said 3:28PM on 3-24-2009
If the users don't have the option to just not use the streams and keep using the site for free, then pooh them.
Reply
SleepingPanda said 4:22PM on 3-24-2009
This really sucks. Guess it's time to delete that last.fm account. :(
Reply
Tim Schönfeld said 4:47PM on 3-24-2009
ok, from the anouncement it sounds like its still free to use as a network and to get recommendations. just listening to the songs will require payments. wich i dont do too much anyways...
Reply
lars said 6:41PM on 3-24-2009
R.I.P. Lastfm - I enjoyed you while you lasted.
I would pay, even a bit more, if that meant I could save legal DRM-free music to my computer.
Reply
kristof.hajdu said 7:12PM on 3-24-2009
last.fm -> RIP
Slowly but surely only one thing remains for music on computer:
the overhated T O R R E N T
Phew... When will you guys realize that you're digging your own?
Reply
-=Ben=- said 8:57PM on 3-24-2009
WTF?
BOOO!!!
Last.FM is awesome... but what about CANADA!
Reply
serrebi said 8:27PM on 3-24-2009
Back to piracy for finding new music then.
Reply
DJ said 8:12AM on 3-25-2009
they have definetlly gone gready for sure ..........
it seems will have to start downloading pirated songs again........
Reply
whiskey said 10:46AM on 3-25-2009
Sorry but i thought that Last.fm was the medium through which the artists announced me their new music so that I, if I liked it, might end up buying it.
Why not stream ads with the music? I might be even willing to bear a system notice (by the system tray) that had an ad on it every X songs. Hell, they could fill up the player with ads for all i care (a minimal view that only showed the buttons and below it the ads running).
They could have also limited how many times a user listens to a song each month (so this forces the new music to be played more). I would even let them force me to publish my last.fm widget with links to buy the songs i like to listen to (they could get all the revenue, i don't care).
There are several ways to not charge the user for what's nothing more than a radio tunner.
Back to Streamtuner and Streamcasts? Well, maybe, let's see how Last.fm plays this one.
Reply
SilverishKitten said 3:09PM on 3-28-2009
If you are looking for alternatives, there is jamendo.com, deezer, com or.. Simply youtube?
I wont be using last.fm anymore, and thank got I was short on money this month cos I was gonna buy a subscription.
Reply