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Last.fm Radio to require subscription (outside of UK/US/DE)

 
  • Same faith as Pandora

    Just great. Then I'll need to find yet another service. First I loved Pandora, it was excellent. When it was closed then I started to use Last.fm and now I need to find another. Any good recommendations?

    "Closed, as free service ended"

    • tomstn said...
    • User
    • 25 Mar 2009, 06:55
    Russ said:
    It's no secret that Last.fm streaming is paid for by advertising. We've unfortunately been forced to close down streaming in places where we can't support our streaming by advertising.

    I don't see this as unethical.

    Well, it all comes down to one thing: business is business, right?

    I guess there would be no problem (well, less of a problem) if all users had to pay for access to radio stations, but you favor some users over another just because of the place they live in. It's hard for everyone to understand why users in the "rich" G3 get all of the features for free, while others have to pay for a service that's not as good as the one G3 gets (again, no full tracks). No wonder so many people feel screwed over; myself included.

    Just take a look at the comments on your blog and all over the web - people are pissed at you not as much for introducing the paid access to streaming, but for the discrimination of users outside G3.

    Most played recently:
    • rickmb said...
    • User
    • 25 Mar 2009, 07:06
    Russ said:
    It's no secret that Last.fm streaming is paid for by advertising. We've unfortunately been forced to close down streaming in places where we can't support our streaming by advertising.

    I don't see this as unethical.


    I guess that's the problem. Just because it makes business sense because the revenue is segregated along national lines, doesn't make it ethically right to segregate your users in the same way.

    I'm less worth to you on a spreadsheet, fine.

    Treat me like that as a person, that's an entirely different matter.

    Very disappointing nobody at Last.fm can look beyond the numbers and see the human beings anymore, especially with a service that relies so heavily on the input of those same people.

    I'm not saying it's an easy problem to solve, but you're probably familiar with the phrase "your broken business model is not my problem". Punishing your customers for your business problems is a bad idea in the best of cases, but doing it along national lines is the worst imaginable way to go about it.

    And hell, I'm willing to make it my problem, I'm willing to pay the damn 3 euros. But not just for not being in the UK/US/DE. I don't subsidize a business that thinks that way.

    Last.fm was supposed to be about the love for music and the internet, two things that know no national boundaries. Last.fm just spat on both, and a large group of users along with it.

    If you see no ethical problem in that, I don't want to be a Last.fm user anymore.

    (Keeping my account until the 30th, in the hope somebody at Last.fm HQ still "gets it".)

    • Moher said...
    • Subscriber
    • 25 Mar 2009, 07:44
    Whats the big deal about 3$/month??? Subscriber accounts are way better then free ones! Don't blame Last.fm for legal issues in your countries.

    • [Deleted user] said...
    • User
    • 25 Mar 2009, 08:14
    Am suprised this didn't happen sooner. Hey at least we can still subscribe to last.fm, it could have been worse (aka Pandora).

    Does this mean we soon will have a "Bring back the Free last.fm" group?

    • skoop said...
    • User
    • 25 Mar 2009, 08:23
    Moher said:
    Whats the big deal about 3$/month??? Subscriber accounts are way better then free ones! Don't blame Last.fm for legal issues in your countries.


    I don't think it's about the money. For some people, like Rickmb, it's about the "racism" involved here. It's not about legal issues, as Russ clearly pointed out. It's about the fact that last.fm is able to find enough advertising for the three countries that get stuff for free, but not for the rest. And I do agree with Rickmb on that this is strange thinking.

    Instead, last.fm could make the streaming services paid-for in all countries, and lower the subscription fee to $2.50. Now, the advertising in the US, UK en Germany helps pay for the rest of the world. This is much more fair.

    Now, I won't go about closing my account over this at this point, but I do frown upon this and hope this is not the first in a string of strange corporate decisions.

    • rjv said...
    • User
    • 25 Mar 2009, 08:26
    some people don't seem to understand that it actually demands a lot of financial resources to run a service like this.

  • rjv: Well, take a look on my case.

    I was a subscriber for about 2 years.
    After stupid change of interface design i decided to protest - without any result.
    In spite of that i tried to extend my, and my friends subscribtion.
    But... it was imposible! Since january i'm unable to buy subscribtion to my friend.
    And the best: i'm unable to buy subsribtion for myself! Why? Cos now i cant pay with a credit card. Last.fm pushed me to make a Paypal account. But I DONT WANT IT.

    So please: dont tell me about "financial resources". I payed, when i dont need to pay and everything was allright. But now i will not pay for stupid decisions of last.fm. Sorry guys, but your bosses are from planet "i-dont-understand-why-i-loose-money".

    • rickmb said...
    • User
    • 25 Mar 2009, 09:05

    Idea...

    Maybe the people at Last.fm should do a real world test, see how it feels:

    - Organize a music event in London. (To be a real analogy it would have to be worldwide and simultaneous, but London is international enough to simulate that.)
    - Get local sponsors.
    - Invite everybody, even explicitely in their own language, but only allow UK-citizens in for free. After all, the sponsors only care about the locals.
    - Stand at the door and tell people that to their face. Tell them they have to pay because they're not British. Look them in the eyes while you explain your perfectly rational business model.

    Suggestion: leave your soul at home. And hire some serious security....

    Just because it makes business sense, doesn't make it ethical. Refusing entry to clubs based on ethnic appearance is also based on pure business sense, only very rarely because the owners are racists: it influences the atmosphere and profitability of the club. Yet it's still a racist policy.

    Last.fm's policy is unfair and discriminatory, and insulting to users, no matter how well the numbers add up, and no matter how much you blame the markets or the music industry.

    If you wouldn't do this to people in person, don't do it over the internet.

    • rjv said...
    • User
    • 25 Mar 2009, 09:16
    Oiolosse:

    i see, i wasn't aware that you had to use paypal these days to pay the subscription. but then again in the faq it says.

    "You can use your credit card with PayPal even if you don’t have a PayPal account. "

    but there's no such thing as free lunch anyway.

    • akrde said...
    • Subscriber
    • 25 Mar 2009, 09:17
    Just curious:

    Not everybody reads the blog and it's T-4 today! So how all the affected Last.fm users outside the US, UK, and Germany will be informed that they can't play any Last.fm radio without subscription from Monday, March 30 forward?

    ...

    • WichitaQ said...
    • Subscriber
    • 25 Mar 2009, 09:21

    Re: Idea...

    rickmb said:
    If you wouldn't do this to people in person, don't do it over the internet.


    i don't see a problem with your example, and i would have done it if i was ordered to do that (which means that there is a boss whom i have to obey)...

    btw, there are cases like that (although not that global)... just to say, where i am (and it probably goes for many other countries) every now and than music schools organise concerts in which the members of the music school get in for free, while other visitors pay a fee. and that never seemed to trouble anyone, after all, people who pay don't go to music school and the music school has to make money in order to keep working...

    i mean, it's not nice to see this, but i hardly believe that last.fm done this because they think other countries aren't worthy of their service... they just aren't capable of making enough profit...





    (btw, to the staff, how do they actually approach the selected markets, i know for sure that the ads from my country aren't that huge in numbers, but i definitely know of a lot of companies that wouldn't mind advertising here, it's just that they've never had any opportunity to see how it works in reality)

  • i see, i wasn't aware that you had to use paypal these days to pay the subscription. but then again in the faq it says.

    "You can use your credit card with PayPal even if you don’t have a PayPal account. "

    Well, i dont know is this a new option or old faq ;> I will check, thanx.
    But BTW: i wrote about this issue on Polish and English Message Boards and there was no admin to tell me this...

    but there's no such thing as free lunch anyway.
    In UK, US and Germany you can eat for free :>

  • Just proxy.

    it's annoying, but I'll just have to proxy through german/us/uk... silly but whatever I'm used to stupid bandwidth/licensing restrictions and having to avoid them. living in a small market (NZ)

  • I'm not going to buy three subscriptions (me, mom and dad) just because I'm living in the wrong country. My parents won't see the difference between Last.fm and a generic free radio, and for little more than 36$ I can buy two 16Gb USB drives to bring my own music to work - music I can choose, pause, and play as I like.

    I hate regional discrimination. I loathe DVD regions, I loathe shops that won't sell outside their country even if they legally could, I loathe everything where the global market is willingly turned into many little market stalls with limited choice. And I won't support a product that decides to take the easy way out and decide that some users should pay more than others for an inferior service. Goodbye Last.fm, it was nice while it lasted.

    • fmera said...
    • User
    • 25 Mar 2009, 09:49

    Re: Idea...

    @last.fm: excuse me for getting emotional over this issue, but despite whatever hard facts you think you may have, this post best sums it up for me:

    rickmb said:
    Maybe the people at Last.fm should do a real world test, see how it feels:

    - Organize a music event in London. (To be a real analogy it would have to be worldwide and simultaneous, but London is international enough to simulate that.)
    - Get local sponsors.
    - Invite everybody, even explicitely in their own language, but only allow UK-citizens in for free. After all, the sponsors only care about the locals.
    - Stand at the door and tell people that to their face. Tell them they have to pay because they're not British. Look them in the eyes while you explain your perfectly rational business model.

    Suggestion: leave your soul at home. And hire some serious security....

    Just because it makes business sense, doesn't make it ethical. Refusing entry to clubs based on ethnic appearance is also based on pure business sense, only very rarely because the owners are racists: it influences the atmosphere and profitability of the club. Yet it's still a racist policy.

    Last.fm's policy is unfair and discriminatory, and insulting to users, no matter how well the numbers add up, and no matter how much you blame the markets or the music industry.

    If you wouldn't do this to people in person, don't do it over the internet.

    U.G.L.Y. - changing the face of music, one artist at a time.
    there are some things pngs can't fix. for everything else, there's pngoptimizer.
    • rjv said...
    • User
    • 25 Mar 2009, 09:49

    In UK, US and Germany you can eat for free :>


    in soviet russia the lunch eats you!

    • [Deleted user] said...
    • User
    • 25 Mar 2009, 09:54
    rjv said:

    In UK, US and Germany you can eat for free :>


    in soviet russia the lunch eats you!


    Outside Russia we make sure the lunch is dead before trying to eat it!

    • Isera said...
    • User
    • 25 Mar 2009, 09:57
    skoop pisze:
    Instead, last.fm could make the streaming services paid-for in all countries, and lower the subscription fee to $2.50. Now, the advertising in the US, UK en Germany helps pay for the rest of the world. This is much more fair.


    Couldn't agree more.

    If you tell ppl to pay, at least make it fair to everyone.

    • Tecfan said...
    • Event Moderator
    • 25 Mar 2009, 09:58
    I guess Last.fm didn't want this to happen, so I support them in this.

    But I wonder if this would have happened if Last.fm wasn't owned by CBS......?

    Anyway, now as you will shitloads of radio users, can you please make the community features better? Like ratings and reviews, newly updated groups, recommended reading, add users from mail contacts, etc?

    If you're into /, you might enjoy my (free) tracks: Tecfan
  • so... I'll be paying a "not American/British/German tax"? yes. that will happen.

    is there a way to cheat this? with Tor or something?

    no big deal
    • Sevish said...
    • User
    • 25 Mar 2009, 10:00
    There is so much winge on this topic... Most of you guys are just quitters and are pissed off that something you got for free is asking you to pay for it. Big deal you guys, it's worth the money.

    rickmb's 'real world test' is a false analogy.

    Last.fm, I support you. Go for it.

    • fmera said...
    • User
    • 25 Mar 2009, 10:03
    here's a thought:

    why don't you consider removing the "free-on-demand" privilege from all us/uk/de users? i imagine that'll ease the strain on your bottom line a tad, wouldn't it? not to mention, lessen the inequality of this double-standards game you're playing, and expecting the rest of the world to play along with you.

    of course i'm just kidding, we all know that's pure nonsense. but just imagine how they'd react if the shoe were in the other foot.

    U.G.L.Y. - changing the face of music, one artist at a time.
    there are some things pngs can't fix. for everything else, there's pngoptimizer.
  • fmera said:
    here's a thought:

    why don't you consider removing the "free-on-demand" privilege from all us/uk/de users? i imagine that'll ease the strain on your bottom line a tad, wouldn't it? not to mention, lessen the inequality of this double-standards game you're playing, and expecting the rest of the world to play along with you.


    yeah, or lets exclude the Jews from using last.fm! of course I'm only joking as well. unlike last.fm.

    no big deal
    • annkat said...
    • User
    • 25 Mar 2009, 10:09

    Spotify...

    ...here I come!

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