Entertainment For Lively Minds
Bye bye Last.fm
Posted by Simon Ford on 24 March 2009 - 8:57pm.
The news that Last.fm is going to start charging users outside the UK $3/month means that I will probably stop using it. It's not that I mind paying, it's just since the advent of Spotify I hardly use it.
Currently, Last.fm say they make enough ad revenue in the UK to not charge, but how long will that continue with competition from Spotify and general ad revenue declining? How many of the Massive would pay to use Last.fm?
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I already do
I've been happily paying £18 since 2005. Although I seldom use the radio streaming, I love collating data about what I'm listening to (from multiple iTunes and Spotify) and making that data available to others to make interesting charts and things.
Personally, though, I don't understand how anyone is making enough revenue through advertising to fund things. I never understood where something like YouTube or Spotify can get enough money for the ads to pay for ever-increasing bandwidth costs.
I'm a Last.fm subscriber too
It costs £1.50 per month and I usually pay six months' worth at a time. I use it a lot to create playlists and themed radio stations - it means that I've got about 20 or 30 personalised, hand-chosen stations to listen to (and that's before you start listening to other people's stations as well), so I reckon it's worth the money.
EDIT: Just read on the Last.fm site that subscriptions are going up to £3 per month for UK users - I still think that's (just about) an OK rate, though.
It's £3 a month for Last FM radio
if you're outside UK, USA or Germany.
Scrobbling, recommendations, charts, biographies, events, videos will remain free, just as it is now.
For how long, we'll see...
Thanks Fraser
for clearing that up, I was led to believe it was to be charged just for using it.
I know it's not the fashionable way, but....
I felt I was making so much use of the site that they deserved some of my money to help keep their servers going. This was back when they were a small company and AudioScrobbler and Last.FM were separate things.
Me too
I signed up summer 2004 and donated for about three years - until CBS bought them.
I still subscribe as it's only a minisule amount...
... but, I'm just curious, why did the CBS take-over stop you subscribing?
At a guess
it's because CBS paid $280m for it.
Subbing
Contributions were in the form of donation in the early days - it was very much a "help pay our server bills" kind of appeal, and this evolved into the subscription offering. When CBS took over, I figured they'd be paying the bills, and I stopped. Nowadays I don't use Last.FM enough to feel like paying a sub is worthwhile.