Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Last.fm going to charge for radio service

According to the recent announcement:

In order to keep providing the best radio service on the web, we need to ask our listeners from countries other than USA, UK and Germany to subscribe for €3.00 per month.
 and this will be in effect from March 30, 2009. Just how many things are wrong here? Unfairness, bad marketing, no understanding about 'one web, no borders' and um, Economics, just to say a few. Stinks worse than rotten fish, really. The comments section is already full of users expressing incomprehension, shocked disgust and 'good-bye last.fm' messages, and as much as I love the idea of social music revolution (which has been wiped from the logo since last July's update) and the original incarnation, I can't say the same of the new, arrogant Last.fm of the past 9 months and the self-destructing direction it is pig-headedly going, and I don't even want to contribute any more data and am now seriously searching for an alternative radio. And if any site starts to offer scrobbling, I'll desert this rotting ship for sure.

Do you use last.fm, and how do you feel about this? Sound off in the comments! (Or go say something at the blog link above.)

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: if you want to request a re-upload of something already expired, please leave your email address (preferably in the spelled-out form of "abc at xyz dot com" to avoid spambots harvesting it), and we'll try to get back to you asap. =)