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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]
Comments
13
Subscribe to commentsTim SchönfeldMar 24th 2009 2:40PM
FINALLY we in germany are not getting screwed when it comes to one of these services... still sucks
NicMar 24th 2009 2:54PM
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...
Tim SchönfeldMar 24th 2009 3:07PM
äh... pandora only works in the us. thats the problem. thanks for not reading the article before posting.
EthanMar 24th 2009 3:28PM
If the users don't have the option to just not use the streams and keep using the site for free, then pooh them.
SleepingPandaMar 24th 2009 4:22PM
This really sucks. Guess it's time to delete that last.fm account. :(
Tim SchönfeldMar 24th 2009 4:47PM
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...
larsMar 24th 2009 6:41PM
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.
kristof.hajduMar 24th 2009 7:12PM
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?
-=Ben=-Mar 24th 2009 8:57PM
WTF?
BOOO!!!
Last.FM is awesome... but what about CANADA!
serrebiMar 24th 2009 8:27PM
Back to piracy for finding new music then.
DJMar 25th 2009 8:12AM
they have definetlly gone gready for sure ..........
it seems will have to start downloading pirated songs again........
whiskeyMar 25th 2009 10:46AM
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.
SilverishKittenMar 28th 2009 3:09PM
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.