:( PowerPlay - Last.FM Offers Radio Play For Cash :(

A brief description of this post:

I think PowerPlay is in danger of being misused for commercial purposes and is counter productive to the impartial and commercially unrelated selection of tracks to receive radio play on Last.FM.


I love music and I love using Last.FM.

I have found countless artists whom I would have probably never heard of if I had not used this service, and for that I am eternally grateful. What is great is the impartial way tracks are played, allowing you to skip tracks you don't like and find ones you do, love these or add them to your playlist and then hear more like them.

What tracks are played is not dictated by who paid the most money for promotion and to get play time; this takes music distribution and promotion out of the hands of middle men and into the hands of the artists allowing artists to reap the full reward of their labours, as it should be.

As I understand it, this is one of the principal ideas behind Last.FM.

So what's with PowerPlay?

If you are unfamiliar with PowerPlay, download the information PDF available here
Basically, as a Label (you must first register as a label to upload artists music) you can pay for a guarantee that a track will receive radio play a certain number of times:

Bronze:
100 Powerplays
€16.50

Silver:
500 Powerplays
€82.50

Gold:
1000 Powerplays
€165.00

Platinum:
2000 Powerplays
€330.00

What this effectively means is that if you have the money, you can get tracks from your label heard, guaranteed.

So hypothetically, if each Last.FM user listens to 100 tracks per day, and there are 100 users, that's 10000 tracks listened to per day. If a label chooses to use the platinum PowerPlay service, they only need do this 5 times (10000 plays), and theoretically every track these 10000 users listen to will not be indiscriminately chosen based on the users musical tastes, but chosen based on who has paid to have a track played. A PowerPlay track will be played before a non PowerPlay track meaning who ever has the most money can to an certain extent dictate what is played on Last.FM radio.

I'm sure Last.FM developers have realized this and as such an identical scenario would not be possible. Right?

So that's an extreme scenario granted, but I wonder how many tracks heard by the 20 million plus Last.FM users are in fact not chosen impartially based on the tastes of that user, but paid for plays. I'm starting to think it's a lot.

My reasons for thinking this is that for the last couple of months, upon playing my recommendations, I am played the same groups of around 10-15 songs over and over. At the moment it includes Uffie, The donners, Client, and Efterklang (all of who are currently touring Europe and looking to drum up sales from tickets and music - a coincidence I think not).
I never get anything else, anything I haven't heard before and the basis for track selection seems to be less related to my musical taste, and more to what tracks are on the list to be played. All these tracks play every time, regardless of whether I skip them, and when I reach the end of these tracks, I am told:
Sorry, there is no more content available for this station. Please choose a different one.
I know for a fact there is a huge amount of music on Last.FM which is similar to my tastes, and with over 8000 tracks scrobbled, you would think I would hear some of this, as I used to. No longer.
These tracks I mention are clearly part of the PowerPlay scheme (if not something is very messed up), and have clearly been given the prominence they have as a promotional tool for the artist in relation to their tours and commercial musical releases, and have been paid for accordingly.
I don't like these artists and I always skip these tracks, but they persist. If this system works fairly, surely I would be played music that was more related to my tastes regardless of if it is a PowerPlay track and not only music which has been paid for to be played.

All of this is very reminiscent of the music industry's past methods of seeking radio play, known as Payola or Pay To Play (see the links below for more information),

http://www.google.com/search?q=payola

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payola
http://www.history-of-rock.com/payola.htm

http://www.google.com/search?q=paying+for+radio+play

http://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/story?id=1591155
http://dir.salon.com/story/ent/feature/2001/03/14/payola/

This is something which Last.FM has not only strived to change and promote knowledge of, but something which they have had a large part in offering alternatives to.

The point I am making is that PowerPlay puts promotion back into the hands of whoever has the most money for promotion, and this is pretty much guaranteed to be either a record label, promotion company or other middle man in between the artist and the listener. If enough tracks use PowerPlay, few or no non-PowerPlay tracks will ever be played.

Besides the ethical and moral implications of this and the documented history of this technique which clearly shows it is damaging to artists and the whole music industry alike -

Is this not completely against the whole point of Last.FM?

I'm the proprietor of a micro-sized recording label, and I'm leaning heavily on Last.fm as one of a handful of networks I'm using to create our online presence and handle many of the functions of an old-model label company. I decided to do so only after a year of using last.fm as a listener; I don't want to direct potential fans to a site I wouldn't use myself. I'd like to offer my perspective on the Powerplay feature in the light of Eltone's concerns.

For me, the opportunity to whip up 100 plays and get feedback on them, for $20 USD, more than offsets the risks of last.fm being flooded by the old-school money-men. Money is draining rapidlly from the music industry as it decentralizes, and I'm willing to bet that a major label will not be able to lock out marginal operators such as myself.

Also, unlike broadcast radio, last.fm tweaks itself to respond to the tastes of each individual listener; if you don't want to hear an act, you can ban it. (two of my last three powerplay campaigns racked up a total of 10 bans, but one "loved it" response as well - the first of those I'd gotten). So simply freeze out acts who bore or annoy you.

So: for me, and a host of other indie artists, the chance for equal access to payola seems to offset the risk of domination, especially when listeners can exclude an act that gets on their nerves.

Perhaps if these concerns persist, Last.fm could implement a "Powerplay" tag that appears when a paid-to-play track comes up, so listeners know.

matt
h.e.a.h.d.

It seems to me that most people who use Last.fm are people who have made an active decision NOT to listen to over played artists on commercial radio. So I seriously doubt that big labels will have the control here that they have on commercial radio.

I know one thing, if I'm listening to Last.fm radio and an artist comes on that I don't like or their music isn't interesting, authentic or good and much of what comes from the big labels these days isn't, I will reject it right out of hand. doesn't make any difference to me who paid what.

You can always skip/ban - unlike old school radio.

-G.

If a track is played to you as part of a powerplay-campaign, the track is clearly recognisable as such. And that was already the case when this thread was started.

Why was this bumped, perhaps it's due to all the CBSization of the site? Or maybe the poster has a valid reply to the OP.

As long as the corporate hands don't shell out millions just to have their overplayed radio crap played on here for money, I am fine with it, otherwise it becomes another useless POS radio station like all the ClearChannel controlled stations nation and worldwide.

(PS: I don't use the radio feature)

dianashamilton said:

Cool, what does it look like (I haven't seen it yet- do you have a screenshot or something)? And, is there already a playable tag radio specific for powerplay tracks?

you couldn't have seen it unless you manage an artist or a label, and i don't think that there's a radio station devoted to powerplay campaigns :D

and yes, it looks like this, although you can't tell much from the picture. basically, imagine this: your band has a new album out, and you want to hit the lights with your brand new ultramegacool lead single... and that's when you powerplay it, to make sure it reaches someone, if that makes any sense to you :D

Babs_05 said:
How can you tell when you've been powerplayed? Does it say something in the Client?

you mean "can i know whether a track i'm listening to is powerplayed or not"?
no you can't, it comes on a regular radio station, like any other tracks :D

oh well, he's probably right, but i've always thought that those come as normal radio station plays, not to mention that it was two years ago.


but again, i guess i'm wrong :\

and to think last.fm was so perfect up until now

That's what I heard. On the other hand, sometimes I can be very unobservant!