Last.fm will soon require a €3/month payment for streaming

[hernil]

Got this mail today:

Hi hernil,

You're getting this email because you subscribe to Last.fm! We're glad you love
the service enough to pay us for it; you have our undying affection.

Today, we're announcing a small change to Last.fm's subscription price. It will
become €3.00 /month. Your hard earned cash will continue to go towards paying
for the music you listen to, as well as the streaming and bandwidth costs of
Last.fm Radio.

You can read more about why we're making these changes here:
http://www.last.fm/about/subscriptionradio

Best,
The Last.fm Team

More info can be found here: http://www.last.fm/about/subscriptionradio .

So, I guess the ones in this forum is a little more interested in music than the average man and it would be interesting to see what you think about this. Personally I think it's a step backwards in the process of bringing music to our time. Even if streaming can't replace having your own music (IMHO) I'm a subscriber at last.fm (so I'm not really affected by this), and in addition to giving me a couple of things like the possibility to listen to my loved tracks etc. it's mostly to support what is, in my eyes, the best legal music streaming initiative out there (and of course it's much more than that). Except maybe Spotify, which is kind of new.

One of the things which caught my attention was that their only doing this change for some countries. That is, I think, breaking one of the key-principals on the Internet and I'm really sad to see that they were forced to take such measures.

On the other side I hope this enables them to further improve their service.

Any thoughts on this?

[nohitter151]

Note this does not affect last.fm users in the US, UK or Germany, and that even in other countries, you can still scrobble. You only have to pay for streaming music and listening to last.fm radio.

[Peke]

Example,
As Last.FM plugin developer they made it very hard for me, PayPal is not available in Serbia (and the question is when it will be available), not being able to stream Radio stations is making big obstacle for making support for loading last.fm radio stations into MM plugin. as talked in http://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=3844

I'm not the problem as when time come we'll figure out way to make things work, but even I find some reason to this it is high risk decision on their side and only time will tell but most likely people will get used to it and accept due the fact that last.fm is much involved as mainstream playback statistic service.

[Steegy_]

Why not use the music streaming database www.GrooveShark.com ?
It's free, you can listen to a lot more songs, and they are complete songs. (And afaik it's completely legal.)

[Zeke129]

Bah, I just use the site to scrobble, get recommendations, and learn where/when events are occurring.

I've never really used the radio.

[nohitter151]

Why not use the music streaming database http://www.GrooveShark.com ?
It's free, you can listen to a lot more songs, and they are complete songs. (And afaik it's completely legal.)

Hey, thanks for sharing this - Grooveshark has a ton of tracks!

[yenalike]

Hi hernil,thanks for the info. By the way,i didnt know that one...i was going to subscribe a week ago,didnt know im gonna pay for streaming.



Regards,
yenalike
[removed by moderator]

[Peke]

@Steegy
Grooveshark do not have API to play tracks in external player

[KorkyKat]

And don't forget to check out the free WE7

http://www.we7.com/


And I guess Spotiface will be in the U.S. in 2010

[Metacore]

@Steegy
Grooveshark do not have API to play tracks in external player

Well, there's this: http://nettech.wikia.com/wiki/Grooveshark_Internal_API

[Diplomat]

Wow, I didn't know about this.

[Dreadlau]

Why not use the music streaming database http://www.GrooveShark.com ?
It's free, you can listen to a lot more songs, and they are complete songs. (And afaik it's completely legal.)

Awesome!

Thanks for the link.