Discussions → The Future of Last.fm Radio APIs

Scrobbling will always be free to use in Mobbler, for now on streaming tracks will require a subscription.

Hmm, I suppose this is the end of LastFMProxy, which would allow you to connect any third-party player to the radio stream, including mobile phones?

Russ said:

It's a restriction imposed by some of our music licensing partners, and not by us.
If you choose to have partnerships on those terms, you do impose the restrictions on yourself.
It's not that it would be impossible to have a service with only music using reasonable licenses, even though it might not line your pockets as much.

But don't blame the changes on your partners, you agreed to the changes by entering or staying in the partnership.

_voice said:
templatemaster sagte:
I would highly recommend pulling all your content from last.fm immediately and negotiating a streaming contract. Get in contact with as many other independent musicians as you can and organize a co-op to improve your bargaining power.
There's a problem with that: I don't want a contract for paid streaming. I want my music to be free for everyone, as long as they don't make money with it.

That's how I pay for the music I listen to. I stopped buying music a few years ago and started to only listen to free music (the non-free stuff on my profile are the albums I bought before that). And I "pay" for this free music by giving something back to the community: My own tracks, samples, promotional work and more.

BTW that's what especially pisses me off about this latest "let's crap on our users a little more and see how long they take it" decision: I don't fucking want commercial music. Why would I spend money to pay for stuff I don't even want?

So I release all my tracks as CC by-nc-sa (which states that I don't allow commercial use, so last.fm would have to ask me to delete my tracks anyway, if they don't want to breach the license).

I'll wait until more details about the change are available.

But my first reaction was to get the domain "phatsonic.org" and start coding a replacement for last.fm. ;)
(That domain is empty right now, nothing to see yet.)

I guess my reactions when I'm angry seem kinda strange for most people... :D

I can see why you're annoyed but the money that they make from the subscriptions is what is paying your royalties. Obviously the money from ads wasn't enough so they had to change for something else to make sure they could continue paying the artists.

lotrgamemast sagte:
I can see why you're annoyed but the money that they make from the subscriptions is what is paying your royalties. Obviously the money from ads wasn't enough so they had to change for something else to make sure they could continue paying the artists.
Interesting idea for a justification, but wrong. As an independent artist you get a share of Last.fms income depending on your play-count and their income. Meaning: Less money for Last.fm equals to less money for the artists.

Now I'm pretty shure that the mayor players of the content mafia (alias music business) don't swing that way and demand either (pretty high) fixed royalties or (higher than they are now) variable royalties. So we're back to square A: Independent artists are fucked because of the commercial music.

Of course, there's the faint possibility of independent artists getting an equal piece of the now bigger cake...
- But 1st: I wouldn't hold my breath for it.
- And 2nd: That still transforms Last.fm from "the best thing in the world of music since many years" to "just another paid music site like thousands of others".
- And last: Let's wait and see if the cake get's bigger. Chances are high that most people will either just use the (still) free features and forget about the rest or leave.

What's happening now is pretty much what I predicted when they had their big "all the mayor label music streamable" announcement. It just came sooner than I thought.
You can't be in bed with the mayor labels without being raped sooner or later.

I Think this is a really bad decision last FM, i will be looking for a new source of music, from now on!

caban said:
If you choose to have partnerships on those terms, you do impose the restrictions on yourself.
It's not that it would be impossible to have a service with only music using reasonable licenses, even though it might not line your pockets as much.

But don't blame the changes on your partners, you agreed to the changes by entering or staying in the partnership.

I agree. We could operate our site without our major deals, but we would not have all the users we have now. Our manifesto has always been that anyone can come to last.fm and listen to any piece of music (ideally for free). The only way we can implement this is by entering into restrictive agreements with the labels.

Consider the backlash if we announced we'd be dropping 95% of all our content because we don't like the licenses.

Get rid of the major-label content, and you're basically turning Last.fm into Jamendo (which is a great site, but a different idea).

_voice said:
There's a problem with that: I don't want a contract for paid streaming. I want my music to be free for everyone, as long as they don't make money with it.Exactly!

I'm a tad confused,

Will I still be able to stream Last.FM Radio over my home computer and laptop?
I don't use lastFM on my phone(slow net connection on my phone + it has FM radio & I use an IPod)

Just like to clear this up, Mobile phones are losing the free radio, and computer may still use it??

So I read the blog.
Now if I'm American, yet living in Australia...I still don't get the free radio do I?
I'm contemplating getting a membership, but it's in Euros which is a big fucking rip off considering that it takes 2 AUD to = 1 Euro...

I want to know what I can do?

This is really sad...
I used to listen to last.fm radio via Vagalume, think this won't be possible anymore...

I was so happy that *I* don't have to pay 3€ per month to be able to stream music over last.fm (living in germany), and now that...

Well, I guess that listening to last.fm over your own application will be possible without problems?

Paypal, You may or may not be able to send cheques, I don't have any idea if you can.


Russ said:
s-mac said:
So I read the blog.
Now if I'm American, yet living in Australia...I still don't get the free radio do I?
I'm contemplating getting a membership, but it's in Euros which is a big fucking rip off considering that it takes 2 AUD to = 1 Euro...

I want to know what I can do?

You can also pay in US Dollars or the (apparently now worthless ;) GB Pound.


I have US Dollars in my bank which is connected to my paypal. Arg, fine erg, Im withdrawing $30, in 3 days Imma bite the bullet and get a subscription.......