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Last.fm To Start Charging International Users
tdobson writes "The popular online radio service Last.fm has announced that users outside of the UK, USA and Germany will need to start paying 3 Euros (about $4.40 USD/£2.80 GBP) per month to continue streaming music on their service. Last.fm doesn't offer much of a reason as to the change, other than writing on their blog that '[t]here will be a 30 track free trial, and we hope this will convince people to subscribe and keep listening to the radio.' Already, there appears to be quite a backlash in responses so far, amongst subscribers and non-subscribers of all nationalities — has this killed Last.fm's appeal, globally?"
I love Last.fm
I'm a regular listener and found many new interesting bands. Not only have I bought their albums, but also went to local concerts that I wouldn't have heard about otherwise.
I will NEVER pay for an internet service.
Remains the question: Are there any alternatives?
has this killed Last.fm's appeal, globally?
Depends on what they're using it for. I might be a minority, but I hardly ever use the radio feature - I use the site as a way to track what I've been listening to, and use the recommendations to find new artists to buy or download from iTunes or Amazon.
Goo goo g'joob.
They have a huge database of listening habits and cannot make money on it. It will be a good example of incompetence.
Dear last.fm,
I have deleted my account because of this ethnic discrimination.
Cheers,
barbazoo
Music wants to be free.
(Also movies, games, software and books. Porn is already free.)
If your business's main appeal is not charging users, then unless you are extremely lucky you are not going to stay in business past when your VC runs out. Free is mostly fantasy, no matter how much cheap-ass users think otherwise.
Now, whether 3 Euros is too much or too little is up for debate. Even while it's free for me, I've find little appeal to it -- too inconvenient to get music I want, yet the installed app is too intrusive. The playlist stuff was mucked up in my short time as an active user, and that was the catchy thing about it - being able both to track your list, show it to people (e.g., on dating and social sites), and look at other people's lists.
Frankly, I have better luck just buying CDs and singles from iTunes and Amazon and I'm willing to pay much more for the convenience and quality.
Last.fm streams? This is news to me, and I've been using it for about 4 years to "scrobble" music.
Name...That...Autocomplete!
At least you can still access it globally unlike Hulu etc
~/ One man's opinions is a lifetime of pain.
This sounds exactly like what happened to Pandora in 2007 when it stopped working for users outside of the US because of licensing issues.
"Die endgueltige Teilung Deutschlands - das ist unser Auftrag." - Chlodwig Poth
One thing I couldn't get a straight answer:
Right now, the site subscription is 2.50/month. The blog mentions that the price to keep streaming songs on the radios will be 3.00/month. It seems that, what's happening is that streaming will be available only to subscribers and the subscription price will be bumped 0.50/month.
But heck, I couldn't get a answer, since they seem to be ignoring the whole discussion after a lot of people started complaining about the geographical subscription requirements.
I started using last.fm only a few months ago; I configured amarok to scrobble the music I listen, then once in a while I use last.fm streams to discover new music with my neighbors' radio. I would'nt pay the admittedly low fee of 3$/month only for this, so I will simply stop using it. I guess the vast majority of users will do the same.
There is a service that delivers you complete albums, for free, whenever you want - and works in any country.
Its called 'bittorrent'
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Perhaps advertising simply does not support Last.FM's licensing deals
Yes, it does. One of the comments there, by the same author of the post, says that the revenue from ads in USA, UK and Germany are enough to pay for the bandwidth and licensing fees they have to pay. Everywhere else, it's not enough and that's why they are charging other countries.
This is simply a realization that free won't pay for their massive bandwidth costs (and no doubt the royalties they need to pay).
A million websites have been launched, and died, after their operators realized that advertising could never cover their costs.
If you look around, banners for sites that have 2 million page views p/month go for as low as US$ 45 p/month. Even if you plaster a site with them you can't scrape a living out of this. Sure, some struck it lucky, but most will die.
Facebook, Twitter, cool toys, but dead men walking ; and they will be replaced after they die. Will you pay a monthly subscription fee to use either one of them?
Facebook is just a blog, a few hacks can string existing blogs together and create the same functionality. Twitter can be done in P2P fashion.
The good times were good, now the money men come calling.
I wouldn't mind a small charge for the service, if it was collected from every user, regardless of where they live. As an "international" Last.fm user, this seems quite unfair practice, so either I'll stop using the service, or use a proxy in one of the three countries mentioned.
U+F8FF
I haven't touched last.fm since I got spotify. I've heard it's not available world-wide, but seeingas it's free and legal, surely this is the future of public music?
It has an iTunes-ish inerface, but has access to millions of artists, and the normal selection of radio-stations. As Well as the great features of being able to make and share play-lists with friends or create an open playlist for a party.
Do many people here use it? IS it a known service? And does anyone want an invite?
The big thing is international licensing. Pandora doesn't limit its services because it's xenophobic or because it thinks foreigners shouldn't be able to listen to online music---they do it because the copyright holders are nutty about controlling the markets abroad. I recall reading somewhere that the licensing costs generally don't justify the expenses for international audiences. (Something like this.) So you can either block access to international traffic, or you can try to make it profitable. Last.fm probably isn't losing much (relatively speaking) by losing its international audience, but apparently they still want to keep their service available overseas.
So, to the posters above, please stop complaining about discrimination. This policy is most likely just the trickle-down piss from the record companies.
I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
Is this IP-based discrimination okay? We should have a (global, of course) law against it...you should neither be discriminated against because of skin, color, race, nor IP :)
Honestly, I *don't* like geographical borders re-emerging in the _global_ Internet world...this is not a good direction. Resist the beginnings!
If they are based in the EU can they stop people from other EU countries using their service?
Also, will i still be able to listen while i'm stuck in some god awful business hotel in france or spain?
Just wondering are there any alternatives for last.fm one where it doesn't matter where your from to listen to the radio? and @damburger, Bittorrent is not even close to an alternative if I want to download music I don't go to last.fm but if I want to keep track of what I listen and find new bands similar to the ones I listen to then I use last.fm and that is not something BT can provide.
Pandora, spotify, last.fm, Hulu. None of which are available in canada or most places outside the US. Bittorrent however is still free in both senses. That they couldn't roll these out internationally is bull. Maybe a few months lag time max to fix the deals internationally. Plus last.fm clearly has SOMETHING in place since they used to stream to everyone. It is somewhat amazing that i've been able to illegitimately listen to streaming music for 10 years now and business STILL hasn't got it right. I guess I should expect a good legit streaming show/movie site in about 2030.
I'm actually a Last.fm subscriber, and am more than happy to pay the meagre 3 euros, but being forced into it? Personally I don't use the paid features much at all, it's as much wanting to support the (excellent) service as it is trying to get value for money.
I wonder if they'll lose that sort of support when they move their business toward a more corporate stance.
You feel sleepy. Close your eyes. The opinions stated above are yours. You cannot imagine why you ever felt otherwise.
About anything. Seriously, it's three dollars a month! I've had a subscription for some time now because I've found TONS of music I would have never found otherwise. Their streaming is great. If my ten cents a day helps keep them afloat and allows me to keep discovering new artists, it's completely worth it. And if you're that cheap anyway, hit up a proxy or do without. There are always shoutcasts and icecasts out there. They suck, but it's an alternative for the financially challenged.
Okay, so Last.fm's whole business is based on the listening habits data which we users provide.
So, let's make a deal, I'll let you keep using my data to keep your business working, and you don't charge me for listening to the streaming stations which, in effect, generate sales for the record companies.
Or, Last.fm can pay me â3 a month for the use of my data.
...and thanks for all the tuna !
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
I recently was in the market for a new soundcard. Not just a soundcard but one that does 5.1 and EAX support for the games I play.
This is harder then it sounds because Creative is shooting straight for the bottom. Their new X-fi chip is so bad they had to allow a third party to use it to get a decent soundcard out. Oh well, luckily I am dutch and I could test the X-fi myself, simply by buying it, running it over the weekend, then returning it on monday when it didn't work out. Full money back. Tried another sound card, returned that too, money back.
Free internet services can pull all kind of crap but the moment I pay for something I am protected by dutch law. Not american "companies own your ass" laws, not british "we want to be american" laws, but dutch laws. The only country in the world where Sony was FORCED to replace ALL PSP's with any defective pixels and this policy has affected all LCD's for years. Pixel warranty? Only for those silly enough not to know the law.
Can Last.FM stand up to this? Can they provide a service with which I will be satisfied 100% or money back, no questions asked? Of course not.
That for me is the difference between paying for something and something being free. I expect and demand and have the law on my side to get my money worth. Even if it is "only" three euro. Frankly I have tried last.fm several times and their service is pretty bad. Spotty loading, slow, lack of pre-buffering and their recommendation system is hazy. It can't even tell bands apart so it will happily mix completely opposite music styles just because one band that is in the style you look for has the same name.
3 euro's? No thanks.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I absolutely love the last.fm service, but I have to say I've barely even used the radio part of the site. As long as I can still find people with similar tastes and music recommendations I'll be happy. Still, it sucks that "international" users have to pay for a service that is free for Americans (for how long?).
I guess it makes sense that the radio is the only thing they are charging for though. That has to be where the vast majority of their bandwidth is used.
Last.fm say thanks.
If you live outside of the US, UK, or Germany, you've stopped costing them money by consuming their bandwidth and server cycles. You weren't making them anything because their advertising partners don't pay for advert traffic outside of those three countries. In essence, you've done them a favour, and you've helped ensure that thanks to reduced costs, the UK, Germany, and US can stay advert supported and not be subsidised with subscriptions.
Thanks again!
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Spotify and last.fm aren't even that similar.
What sets last.fm apart is the great community effort and recommendation engine. I use it all the time to find and - actually - BUY new music as well as finding out about events that I might otherwise have missed.
Spotify is great when you already know what you want to listen to but I find the music discovery factor of Spotify to be sorely lacking.
Can't wait 'til Spotify provides an open API and someone provides a nice mashup to stream my last.fm recommendations through Spotify!
(I've seen some hacks based on Spotifys Google Docs spreadsheets providing parts of this functionality already.)
As it stands, EUR 3 for last.fm recommendations and free radio streaming is just "OK". Spotifys EUR 10 for on-demand streaming is also just "OK".
I'd pay last.fm EUR 10 a month in a heartbeat if they'd combine their recommendation with Spotifys ad free on-demand streaming.
A partnership brewing, perhaps?
Last.fm is owned by CBS, a company that's so desperate for ca$h right now (due to Sumner Redstone's poor investment choices) that they would remove the gold fillings from dead people and melt them down if they could.
I have seen this line of reasoning a few times, and I think it is important to get it straight.
It is perfectly normal that the pricing for services and products is different in different countries. I mean, how retarded do you have to be to think that an item X should cost exactly the same in, say, the country it was produced and the country it has been shipped to after paying tolls?
And especially especially when we are talking about copyrights and international licensing, the matters are complex. Say, I had enough money *and* the juristic possibility to get a special kind of contract in two countries which allows me to play the music for free in these countries... am I obliged to pay -- possibly much more money -- to get the same type of agreement in all other countries in the world?
Nope. Look, I am living in Germany, but I'm not a German citizen. Last.fm is not free in the country of my origin. Discrimination / rascism would have been if they refused to provide me with the same service as German citizens. Or if the Germans living in my country of origin were allowed to listen to last.fm for free, whereas other people would have to pay. That would have been discrimination.
There was a similar discussion in regard to iTunes. iTunes music store is always national -- works only in one country. There are plenty of countries where you cannot buy music from iTunes (even within EU). Are they rascist? Nope. Neither is Walmart, even though there is not a single Walmart in Burkina Faso. Or an online pharmacy shop in London even though it does not ship certain drugs to the U.S. -- legal in London, illegal or not allowed for import in the U.S-
The fact that Internet brings different countries together, and allows you to communicate over juristic and national boundaries doesn't mean that these boundaries do not exist. Don't you forget this.
j.
OK the case for me purchasing an account on one of the US vpn providers keeps getting stronger. 4.40*12=52.80. Witopia provides VPN at USD 36/yr, and allows me to use it for the general case of any US service that geolocks (Hulu, Pandora, and the list keeps getting longer)
Why would I give Last more money for effectively less service?
Min
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
...the world wide web gets chopped into bite-sized chunks, to be gobbled up by overweight bonus-grabbers, their quivering jowls dripping slime while they stuff their gassy wobbling guts. Just like with the whole globalisation thing really... borders which are broken down for the grabbers are reinstated for the 'consumers' using licensing and technology. Vote with your wallets, people! It is the only vote which counts in a capitalist world.
--frank[at]unternet.org
We Europeans already have Spotify and plenty of other sources. I'd be MORE inclined to pay if everyone had to pay, not only we. I'm tired of being treated as "less worthy" just because I'm from mainland Europe. I say let them stay cocks, see how many customers they make. What laws prohibit them from making money here? Advertisements are allowed and as far as I know our laws are generally quite lax.
What makes it really sad is that even if you pay $3 you still don't get the on demand service that US, UK and Germany have.
Great thinking by the copyright holders.
But I will stop paying if it is so. The reason is that Last.fm is interesting mostly for the social networking (and specially the system of events). If people of my country stop using it, then it will uninteresting.
Seems to get worse - they are about the change the API, and streaming to mobile phones will not be allowed.
2.You won't be allowed to use our API to stream to mobile phones. This is unfortunately a limitation of some of our licensing agreements.
I wonder what the rationale for that is.
You aren't remembered for doing what is expected of you
One lesson I have learned the hard way is simply that once you offer a service for free you can not charge for it in the future. You loose too many clients that way.
In this case, however, it appears to me that this is a good way for them to get rid of unwanted users. They are not loosing their main base. It would be interesting for me to see what the user base looks like geographically - I suspect the bulk of their users are from the "free" countries.
Whatever the actual reason - there are still plenty of options. No love lost here...
Need an ISP in South Africa?
Seems like there are plenty of ways to make money from last.fm users without charging them directly.
- a craigslist/ebay style setup to buy/sell/trade music/show tickets/whatever - take a cut from the ads/transaction fee - there are forums but these are token and there isn't a Buy/Sell section anywhere AFAIK.
- use music recommendations to sell people music directly rather than linking to amazon/itunes whatever. Particularly for smaller bands that can't get recording contracts - work to hook them up with gigs and sell merchandise through the site and take a cut - essentially cut out the record labels as middle men and still provide a service that makes it easy to find smaller bands.
- they have recommendations for events in the local area but I never see them handle ticket sales at all - well why the heck not - local shows are much smaller scale than giant stadium shows and they could get a larger turnout and
Of course setting up this kind of infrastructure costs money, particularly to do it globally, but use your user base to add events in the region and use them to review and categorize bands and just make it easy for bands to offer goods through the site. Charging users directly is a good way to lose them because there are plenty of free alternatives and we've all gotten used to not paying for radio. Music fans are among the most passionate - give them services they can actually use and take a reasonable cut and they'll probably embrace it in droves.
They just do not get social networking at all.
Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
has this killed Last.fm's appeal, globally?
Yes, totally useless now.
Way of autofail.
Pandora Radio is a good one.
No, pandora sucks way more.
As an artist that uploaded my music with the intent that it can be listened to for free, I don't remember being asked about this.
Furthermore, it seems I have to pay to listen to music on a website where I contributed some fo the content.
Thank you last.fm.
while i understand the premise behind this move (its always about money, aint it ? ;) ), it will have serious consequences: ;) ).
less users from countries that do not get the service for free.
this leads to less of an incentive for bands from those countries to sign up, publish their music for free (or for money - doesn't really matter).
and that means that the sole reason for which i love last.fm - the amazing variety of music from every corner of the globe available on it - will be gone.
it will become just like any bog standard radio station, pushing britney spears, pussycat dolls and just5 (no disrespect - the mentioned are just not my thing
im sure that others will agree that the amazing variety of music in the system is an enormous advantage of last.fm, and loosing it will lead to a slow decay of the service.
having said that - im in the UK, and will be receiving the service for free.
and having said _THAT_ i wouldn't mind at all if the service became a globally paid service, and everyone was required to pitch in to keep/raise the quality - i would pay for it myself.
They had a mediocre service so i'm not too worried. type in something you like and you get a bunch of bands that sound kinda like them but suck, every 15 min or so you'd get a good one, but it wasn't worth the effort. Not really something i want to pay for.
This is a joke. I am joking. Joke joke joke.
Service will be closed or heavily resized, I don't want to pay for listening music, It's a pity because service is good and nice but a lot of folks like me will switch to something else, for free.
Ben
Well folks, there is always the open source iRate Radio:
http://irate.sourceforge.net/
I've gotten tons of good music from iRate.
This is actually worse than the original announcement because not only they're restricting international users, they're also crippling the service for everyone else.
Using Mobbler is awesome. Being an international user and not being able to use it anymore will *definitely* kill last.fm for me.
Everything Last.fm does generates lots of hate from the community. I've honestly let my subscription lapse for two reasons. First, they were bought out by Huge Record Conglomerate and I decided they don't need my money anymore, but more importantly, it got to the point where the only somewhat useful feature that was subscription-only was being able to see who visited my profile.
It seems this relates only to listening to Last.fm radio streaming, which I don't care about, and I'm in the US, which makes me care even less. But if you consider the amount of bandwidth that goes into streaming that content, if you listen to it for 8 hours a day I would consider it no different than an NPR subscription. Except that the money is going to Big Record Conglomerate, instead of, you know, NPR.
I like music
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I love spotify, but I only was able to use for 2 weeks before they disconnected me for using it in the USA.
I'd take spotify over last.fm anyday, soon as spotify opens up to the USA, I'll pay a subscription to it.
I wish someone would compare all of them and write a nice article on benefits. Last.fm has a horrible website and user interface, too annoying to take seriously.
That put the nail in the coffin. I'm switching to Spotify, their free service is ad funded, that's good enough.
Does this not violate the European Union single market rules, when the service charges a fee from the users from 25 EU countries, and does let users from 2 other EU countries to get free service? I'm in a EU25 country, not UK or Germany - and to me this feels like a a clear case of discrimination because of nationality/geographic location. Case for the European Commission to investigate? Last.fm, you will not get away with this!
So, here I make a joke. "last.fm" uses the country TLD of Micronesia, which is, of course, not one of the countries in the summary...
It's a play on "international".
Nobody else has brought this up, and I get modded "Redundant"?
Thanks, mod.
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
You've also taken away one source for the recommendations-engine, the only thing making the site worthwhile.
Also how many indie labels will be willing to give their music for free to a service demanding payment from pretty much the entire world to listen to this music? I expect lots of indie-labels to withdraw their music based on this.
Finally when only people in the US, UK and Germany is feeding the system new input, except the recommendations to go stale, users to stop caring and the site to quietly die a slow death.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
If you're a last.fm please consider joining our group: http://www.last.fm/group/Bring+back+the+free+last.fm . I apologize beforehand for the link if someone thinks of it as spam but is not. We're trying to find alternatives as well. Thanks for your time guys.
As the recession forces people to tighten their belts and be more cautious about where they spend their money, the effects are not limited to consumers. When revenue streams start to dry up, companies are gonna look at stuff they previously offered free as a place to now charge for the same service. They are gonna look at agreements not to sue as potential shredder food. They are gonna look at how they can exploit the politicians and media they have in their pockets to ensure lock in. They need to find ways to keep their profit levels up, as they are judged by the performances of their predecessors.
Look at how many companies are now turning on the lawsuits since their profit levels are plummeting. They want to force people to pay license fees for stuff they turned a blind eye to for years; whether there's a case or not. At this time, even the threat of a lawsuit can force capitulation as defending it will likely make them bankrupt.
Like anything, some things the public will pay for even if it was previously free of charge, while others they wont. The mobile phone industry has had their heads in the sand over features, with the "build it and they will come" mentality, dreaming of lots of users signing up for subscriptions to all sorts of shit, while the reality is that while some users would use them if free....they won't pay for them. Most people use their phones for calls and SMS messages, even if their phone is stacked with features.
Everyone is fighting for a share of an ever decreasing pot of money. Some have no thoughts beyond their own greed of the lifestyle they've been accustomed to.
Last.fm To Start Charging International Users, Lasers
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
Just in the spirit of lunacy, I went to look at this "Last.fm" thing that people have been talking about for a few weeks now.
It claims to be some sort of internet radio service - am I correct in this understanding?
But it doesn't appear to have any content apart from music. Again - am I correct in this, or have I failed in finding content using the site's search facilities?
So, no content other than music, and now they're charging for it's lack of content. I think that's not a business model I can see any reason to support.
Well, off to download this morning's In Our Time, and this afternoon's Material World. Couldn't listen to them live because I was working on some DVDs which required audio attention.
Last.FM? Unless it has some content, it's not going to get any money from me. Crash and burn, baby.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
I don't know when this policy change is planned by Last.fm, but personally, before deleting my account there, polishing my tinfoil hat and start qq-ing about how they is suckz0rs, I wait till April 1 has passed.
I invested quite some time there, Last.fm "learned" pretty well by now what music to select for me (more importantly, what not to select). I'd hate to go through that process all again.
...a fact which for the sake of a quiet life most people tend to ignore ~H2G2