Rolling last.fm thread 2009 no haters!

This blog post is a bit on the hyperbolic side, but it does sum up well the problems of last.fm's recent "service changes":

http://xrrf.blogspot.com/2009/03/last-fm-summons-whine-switches-off.html

Any non- UK/US/Germany posters with an opinion on this?

Well, to me that really is the main problem with this. Why give UK/US/Germany scrobblers a pass? On their blog they only came up with this answer:

"These are the countries in which we have the most resources to support an ad sales organization, which is how we earn money to pay artists and labels for their music. We are focused on the US, UK, and Germany as key markets, with the help of the CBS Interactive salesforce and our own sales team here in London. Our headquarters are in the UK and we’ve always had a strong presence in DE.

And so we’ve made the decision to focus on these markets for free streaming radio. We are still available worldwide and while listening is subscription, all the other rich content on the site is still free."

So much for the global economy right?

I'm a subscriber. I'm confused about if subscribers also have to cough up to use the radio. But the whole thing stinks because it's directed at certain regions, whereas other regions are left alone. Why not charge $0.50 in all countries instead?

I'm Dutch, but UK/US/Germany-users, like yourself, can have a opinion about this as well. What say you?

Oh yeah, and the glorification of "the help" they receive from CBS is really uncalled for. It's CBS whose doing this in the first place!

I've only streamed a couple of songs ever, so this doesn't affect me personally at all. But wasn't last.fm going to allow people to pay for all-you-can-stream? Whatever happened to that?

Yeah it totally sucks I think, and it's pretty weak to use the "key markets" excuse. As that blog post says, there's no reason why European users shouldn't move over to Spotify wholesale now, which I must admit I have done now.

If you're in the US, you don't have that option, though.

we americans are always discriminated against

good luck USA!

Actually there were recent New Order remasters, Pfunk. A lot of people complained about their quality, though, so they're re-releasing them sometime next month.

yeah i remember reading that thread about them a while ago

I'm Dutch, but UK/US/Germany-users, like yourself, can have a opinion about this as well. What say you?

I'm in the UK, and my opinion is: hah, fuck off everyone who isn't the UK/US/Germany. We're all right, Jack! Quick, pull up the ladders behind you! Etc.

<Beat>

No, of course it fucking isn't. This is a crazy move and one I imagine paves the way for UK/US/German users to end up shelling out at some point further down the line, too (my views on the sustainability of free content have been aired elsewhere, mostly on newspaper-related threads). Fundamentally, this:

Why not charge $0.50 in all countries instead?

is the million-dollar (or even fifty-cent) question.

because these are the 3 big markets and they know no-one will pay.

I can't believe that to be true Pfunk. The willingness of people to pay for something they got attached too is enormous. As a matter of fact, I don't know why the brilliant people at CBS didn't think of it! Say 30 percent would shell out a measely $0.50 per month to enjoy their radio, it's still 100% more than last.fm rakes in now for that service (which is precisely nothing). Of the people who don't want to pay at first, a fair amount will eventually turn around and pay up. I don't believe a large number of users will leave last.fm for this. Which is - seen from the user point of view - quite tragic. But the truth is that most people - especially having gotten used to a service like this - will eventually turn around.

By god, last.fm could've avoided all this commotion by simply upping the subscription price with $0.50. Explain these are hard times, and no-one would've complained. But giving three countries a pass, and letting the rest of the countries pay for the service to be up is ridiculous. Which is exactly what can be expected from a company like CBS.

Last.fm is still better for less mainstream music but spotify is much easier to use. I think most last.fm users however dont listen to music and just use it for scrobbling and social interaction. So they wont be interested much in paying.

Spotify will have to A) drop prices and B) Get a lot more labels on board that I like than they currently have and C) have better search by genre/labels function before I even consider subscribing. I'm happy to use it as it means artists are getting money, but I will not pay £10 a month for it as it currently stands. £5 I would.

http://www.last.fm/forum/21717/_/517178

Subscriptions have went up, it's now €3/$3/£3 , a 100% rise.

I've went for a 6 month subscription for £9. As from Monday it will now be £3 a month.

Hmm, i only ever subscribed for one month, but it still says i'm subscribing. maybe this'll be the turning point.

if you want to subscribe again you better do it quick to get it at the old price.

Lady Gaga - Poker Face is currently the #1 song on last.fm...when is the last time a female act had the #1 song?

when lady gaga last had a song out?

britneys comeback?

nah i remembered "Gimme More" unfortunately coincided with In Rainbows' release. i'm not sure how well "Womanizer" did tho.

Animal Collective is still top of the ilxor group chart

if i delete the animal collective album from my ipod will that help knock it down? (cuz i really wouldn't mind.) there should be a way to count "emphatically and deliberately did NOT listen to."

still never knowingly heard animal collective.

Surely it only scrobbles from ipods what you listened to?

There's nearly 7000 Led Zeppelin listeners out there who cant spell
http://www.last.fm/music/+noredirect/Led+Zepplin

Anyone have any more examples of misspellings/bad tags for famous bands?

i noticed that btw as a HYPED ARTIST on this page http://www.last.fm/charts

http://www.last.fm/charts/hypeartist

for you tracks fans http://www.last.fm/charts/hypetrack

I want to meet the people who are the top listeners of this:

http://www.last.fm/music/+noredirect/Led+Zepplin/_/Smoke+On+The+Water

those 227 people scare me

http://www.last.fm/music/+noredirect/Led+Zepplin/_/Smoke+On+The+Water/+listeners

Brittany Spears - 2,478 plays (762 listeners)
Kaiser Chefs - 292 plays (89 listeners)
The Dammed - 109 plays (41 listeners)
ZZZ Top - 19 plays (4 listeners)

Kaiser Chefs hahahaha

http://www.last.fm/music/+noredirect/Dep+Purple

http://www.last.fm/music/+noredirect/Dep+Purple/_/SMOKE+IN+THE+WATER

2 mistakes in the latter you may notice

http://www.last.fm/music/+noredirect/Radiohed

http://www.last.fm/music/RADIOHED+WITH+BLUR

1,900 people have the same Kingsmen track I saw mislabled on Gnutella 8 years ago, yet haven't seen fit to correct the metadata:

http://www.last.fm/music/+noredirect/Chuck+Berry/_/Louie+Louie

I was like, "Wow! I've never heard his version!" Then the same old Kingsmen version started playing.

Unless he *did* do it at some point. Or they didn't have an artist label at all, googled it, saw the songwriter's last name, and made a conjecture.

http://www.last.fm/music/+noredirect/Mariah%2BCary%2B%2526%2BWhitney%2BHousten

http://www.last.fm/music/OOasis

http://www.last.fm/music/+noredirect/Mariah%2BCary%2B%2526%2BWhitney%2BHousten

naturally their song is titled "When You Belive"

haha

Just for bimble, http://www.last.fm/music/+noredirect/Joi+Division

and for alex in nyc http://www.last.fm/music/+noredirect/Kiling+Joke

http://www.last.fm/music/+noredirect/Yea+Yea+Yeas (59 listeners)

And how can we forget ILM fav:

http://www.last.fm/music/+noredirect/Kayne+West (3,095 listeners)

And I noticed that the ILXOR last.fm group has 666 members...

http://www.last.fm/music/+noredirect/Erica+Badu
http://www.last.fm/music/+noredirect/Erika+Badu
http://www.last.fm/music/+noredirect/Fleetwood+Mack (my worst hypothetical rapper name)
http://www.last.fm/music/+noredirect/Narls+Barkley
http://www.last.fm/music/+noredirect/Ludicrous

http://blog.last.fm/2009/03/30/radio-announcement-revisited

Since our announcement last Tuesday about starting to charge users €3.00 per month for listening to the radio in countries other than the USA, UK and Germany, we’ve received a lot of feedback. It’s not a decision we’ve made lightly, and I want to explain why we came to this conclusion and answer some common questions.

Last.fm Radio has always been ad supported, which means we sell ads on the site to cover the cost of running the service and paying the music licensing fees. If you’ve spent more than 5 minutes on the site you’ll know that the Last.fm community is international to the extreme – we are made up of people from practically every country in the world. Last.fm is a better place for it.

However, we simply can’t be in every country where our radio service is available selling the ads we need to support the service. The Internet is global, and geographic restrictions seem unfair, but it’s a reality we are faced with every day when managing our music licensing partnerships.

We’re listening and we’ve postponed the date on which radio will become a subscription service outside the USA, UK and Germany. In the meantime we’ll be squeezing in some additional improvements based on your requests:

* Gift subscriptions: you’ll be able to buy a subscription for a friend

* Updating developers using our Radio API: third-party apps that stream Last.fm Radio will have full access to the Radio API, so streaming will work provided the user that logs in is a subscriber. (All other APIs remain free/unchanged)

* Investigating alternative payment options. If Paypal sucks in your country, or you don’t have a credit card, don’t despair. Based on feedback so far, we are looking at supporting pay-by-SMS, and possibly some other options. Can’t promise we’ll have support for everyone’s favourite payment system from day one, but we’ll do our best to make it easy for you.

As soon as we’ve completed the upgrades noted above, we’ll move ahead with the transition. Thereafter, radio in the USA, UK and Germany will remain ad-supported, and radio in other countries where it’s not feasible to have an ad-supported service will be moving to a subscription service.

It's amazing how many badly tagged artists are on last fm. At least you can flag them up now I suppose.