Last.FM To Require Subscription For Mobiles and Home Devices 173
Hummdis writes "If you, like so many others, listen to Last.FM on your mobile or home entertainment devices, then you're going to need to pay for this once-free service effective February 15th. It remains free to listen on the Last.FM website, Xbox Live, Windows Mobile 7 phones and the desktop app, but if you want to continue to listen on Android, your Blu-ray player, or any other device, you'll need to spend the $3.00 per month to be able to do so."
Pandora it is then (Score:2, Interesting)
Good call, dopes..
Fair Enough (Score:2)
Content costs money. They've been providing it for free for a long time, and will continue to provide it for free in many cases. Asking a small fee to support their efforts hardly seem unreasonable. I already pay for Pandora (also $3/month) and it's well worth it.
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Quite interesting. Aside from the financial side, I think getting stuff played via internet radio and the like is more about exposure, though it is good to see that self-pressed CDs make the most for the artist (not that this wasn't obvious already).
The problem is that you will earn a lot less by changing from free to pay for (even if you only charge $3 p/m) due to people's perception of value. You've already set the value of the service at free, to charge feels like the subscriber is getting ripped off. Th
Licensing (Score:5, Interesting)
Because of draconian content distribution licensing schemes. Buying a license to stream over the internet is probably per-device, so computers require once license to distribute, handhelds/phones need another license fee, set-top boxes need another fee...
I used to work for a radio company and we ran into the same problems. Some content we paid for could be put over the airwaves and over the streaming internet station, some of it could only be put over the air, depending on the licensing. The company even got into trouble for having a pause button on the player, as that constituted downloading internet content which fell under a separate license than internet "streaming."
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Because of draconian content distribution licensing schemes. Buying a license to stream over the internet is probably per-device, so computers require once license to distribute, handhelds/phones need another license fee, set-top boxes need another fee...
That doesn't seem to be correct.
The rates seem to be based on the kind of service you provide and the amount of content you stream.
You'll pay more if you honor specific requests - streaming tiles from a catalog like Rhapsody's. Less if you look more like a radio station - building playlists around user-defined artists or themes. Licensing 101 [soundexchange.com]
There does seem to be an "enterprise cap."
The license will be a more or less a fixed and managable expense for something the size of Last.fm or Pandora.
But distri
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There is less value to advertisers when you don't see the ads. Computer screen? Xbox? $$$ is higher per impression. Note why Hulu requires a subscription for your iPad, PS3, etc while it doesn't on the web. Different platforms effect the value of the ad displayed.
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There is less value to advertisers when you don't see the ads. Computer screen? Xbox? $$$ is higher per impression. Note why Hulu requires a subscription for your iPad, PS3, etc while it doesn't on the web. Different platforms effect the value of the ad displayed.
That argument would have merit if the subscription fee included WP7 phones, which it does not.
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Microsoft may have made a deal to negate the need for the fee on the Windows phone platform. Capitalism 101. Personally, I'll stick to Android, but some people may see it as a perk.
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How can you possibly skip ads on iPad, PS3, etc? I can understand that for Pandora, or Last.FM, which are audio only streams (basically). But the ads before the video are still available for iPad, PS3, Wii, Xbox, etc. Like someone else said, it's all about the old media thinking that watching it through your computer is different than watching it on your other device. Even thought I can hook a computer to the TV to watch Hulu as well (which I already do).
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Great point, for you and the one other guy that bought a zune. To this day I still have not seen one in real life.
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The last part is the only one I would care about.
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For a product aimed at the general public, you would kind of expect all of us to have seen them on sale somewhere at some point.
It's not like we don't have an interest in this type of thing, if it was commercial gear then it wouldn't be surprising but the zune is firmly aimed at consumers and it is not available for consumers to buy in Ireland and the UK at least.
The Zune is a failed product, at least in this part of the world. Hopefully someone will know somewhere that sells them but i'm doubtful they have
Ok, Next (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Ok, Next .... or not cause your stuck. (Score:2)
if you have satellite radio you can listen for free online
You can listen online for free? News to me. My Sirius package doesn't have internet access last I checked. Maybe I need to try logging in.
Oh, and just how do you get any of those services on your XBOX360 or other device that ONLY has Last.FM?
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Xbox Live still gets it for free, so those individuals don't need to move anyway.
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if you have satellite radio you can listen for free online
Not on SiriusXM. $3 a month for internet or mobile access.
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If you have a lifetime subscription, you have free internet radio streaming.
They had, however, deactivated my account when they made the change to paid only for everyone else, but it only took a phone call and they reinstated it since otherwise it would be a violation of my contract.
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The low quality feed was free. The high quality feed always costed $3 a month. They got rid of the low quality feed altogether now. That was before the merger, though.
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Bleh. (Score:5, Informative)
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if you're paying, might just as well go with spotify.
it's a bummer though when services go this way, "free" in web browser, except if the browser is on devices z, y or x.
So How Do They Know? (Score:3)
Re:So How Do They Know? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm guessing if you're doing it that way it's fine, but if you're using the Last.FM app itself, then you'll have to pay. If you leave it at default it'll just take you to the appropriate place to download the app. If you fake the browser ID you get the desktop page which can take forever to render and the flash thing can be as slow as anything (and thusly drain your battery faster).
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I'm kind of curious if this will still work. What's to stop someone from creating an Android app that uses Rhythmbox's last.fm "method"?
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Flash reports what platform it is running on.
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Problematic for mobile devices, where Flash players on web pages will stop as soon as you minimize them. :(
That clucking and flapping sound ... (Score:4, Insightful)
... that's the chickens coming home to roost.
All you folks who ditched the eeeevil "traditional" services that wanted payment because stuff on the internet was free: this is your wake-up call. Now that you've had a taste of their wares, it's time to pay up if you want the good stuff.
It wasn't going to be free forever, so you need to start thinking about which businesses you want to support, because the big media conglomerates are about to roll over the web like the juggernauts they are.
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As long as thees dumb companies make it so you can get it free one way, and have to pay using other ways, it'll be pretty simple to get it free the other ways, using technical hacks.
For instance, if you're on your PC, using an open-source audio player, how can they keep you from getting it for free? All you have to do is make it look like the audio player is a web browser, which is trivial. Writers of these free audio players will have no problem writing plug-ins for these services which
Re:That clucking and flapping sound ... (Score:4, Insightful)
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I've probably been on the web much longer than you, Sweetheart. I think the days when small startups offer things for free is coming to an end. The time to choose who you want to support with your payments is coming fast. Don't confuse the web of your youth with the web of the future. I have not, and I haven't been wrong so far.
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I've been on the web as long as there has been a web to be on, sweetheart, and what I've noticed is that there is always another player coming along to try to make some money on a business plan guaranteed to fail, who can find some investors dumb enough to think that it could work.
Seriously, with some of the stuff that was invested in during the dot-com bubble, we had it proven to us beyond any doubt that many investors are total fucking idiots who clearly did NOT earn their fortunes.
Creative Commons radio (Score:2)
Or we'll just wait for some other small startup company to come along and broadcast free radio over the net again.
It would get a negligible number of listeners because in order to be lawful, it would have to play only Creative Commons or similarly licensed music, not major label music. The supermajority of the general public demands major label music.
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Wait, is demonoid down? Oh Jesus you scared me for a second. You joker you!
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It wasn't going to be free forever, so you need to start thinking about which businesses you want to support, because the big media conglomerates are about to roll over the web like the juggernauts they are.
It wasn't ever free, that's a lie to attempt compare ad-based web radio to piracy. We already support the business by listening and looking at adds. Foolish business try to demand payment, and get replaced by better ones that don't. The music industry makes less in a year than what Sergey has in his personal bank account. I personally think that Google is going to steamroll the media corps soon. Look at youtube. We already get all that stuff for free. Oh, and corps can take over the Internet. It'll be gon
Quality is the issue for me (Score:4, Interesting)
Not relevant because of grooveshark (Score:5, Interesting)
Last.fm is hardly relevant today, because of grooveshark.
Grooveshark is like last.fm, except that you can play any list of songs you want in any order that you want, and you can rewind/fast forward as you wish. Oh, and it lets you play music all day long (there is no limit to number of minutes you can be connected).
I'm surprised that the RIAA hasn't come down like a ton of bricks on Grooveshark yet. It is different from limewire and napster-classic in just two ways:
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The music you stream cannot easily be downloaded for storage for offline play.
A quick glance at the search engine of your choice shows that doing exactly that is trivial.
Re:Not relevant because of grooveshark (Score:4, Informative)
I thought I'd check out your recommendation. Unfortunately, according to the android market at least, grooveshark requires $9 month for a "Groovshark Anywhere" subscription if you want to use it from your mobile, although it does have a free trial of unspecified length.
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That's the main downside I'm seeing with Grooveshark.
With Last.fm there was at least Vagamule (modified version of Vagalume) as a "fire and forget" solution to search, listen and record at the same time (and end up with nicely catalogued MP3 files).
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Grooveshark also plays non-US music (Score:2)
This is a godsend for those of us with foreign music tastes (at least I could find many French artists). Too bad that Apple is still shackled by the music industry into not allowing cross-border music sharing... then grooveshark it is.
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Anything that looks like Pink Floyd is removed. That's the only band that Grooveshark admins fear.
That's because Pink Floyd have their own air force. They bought RAF Mildenhall in the 1980s. Although it's techically a US Air Force base, it's privately funded by a shadowy organisation headed up by Dave Gilmour.
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Wonder who's sponsoring this... (Score:4, Interesting)
Google Listen? (Score:4, Interesting)
There's always Google Listen [googlelabs.com]. It's not live streaming, but it has a large library of "casts" (should I really use the word "pod" for non-iOS centric speech?) available for your to peruse. Just sayin'..
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Good call! Mod parent up.
Fun fact: the term "broadcast" is a farming term referring to throwing seeds over a tilled field.
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Are you suggesting that "podcast" be deprecated and replaced with "broadcast"?
If so I, for one, am all for it.
Say what? (Score:2)
This news surprises me. Last.fm has always been $3/month, with a very short free trial. I'm guessing it must have only been free in North America or something.
Earlier this year they also cut a number of "channels", including the option to listen to "my collection". They offered no discount for the reduced services so I gave up my subscription. I got the distinct impression that this was under pressure from the usual RIAA types.
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I did the same. I used to listen Last.fm a lot, and I discovered several artists that I hadn't heard of before, and bought quite a few albums as a result.
I had a monthly subscription, and I thought it was well worth the money. I wasn't that interested in the big name bands, what was interesting were the less well known artists from their huge database of music from around the world. But like you, I cancelled my subscription when they cut the "my loved tracks".
It was nice while it lasted, but .. the world mo
What, people use it to stream lo-quality music? (Score:3)
http://last.fm/user/TheoGB [last.fm]
Read it and weep, crap music fans.
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I came to say this, too. I love the scrobbling end of things.
Discovery has been so-so, but definite big winners when it got it dead on.
My stuff [www.last.fm]
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I listen to it occasionally, but I agree that the main point is the scrobbling.
http://www.last.fm/user/The_Barbarian [www.last.fm]
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Likewise. I don't think I've every used it for streaming music, I have Spotify for that (which I do pay a subscription for because I like it and use it a lot).
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I decided that free was too high a price for it (Score:2)
ATTN: Any Last.fm engineers reading slashdot (Score:2)
Please add some form of adaptive (or configurable) quality to your streaming service. I currently find it unusable (and therefore not worth paying for) due to occasional audio gaps. I would FAR prefer lower quality without interruptions to a high quality stream that cuts out once or twice per song.
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Alternative (Score:2)
(i.e. return everything tagged with both "foo" and "bar")
Not news (Score:2)
I'd rather pay $3 to have music than try to search around for stuff I want.
There's a reason why... (Score:2)
Probably because, while it's bad enough here in the US, it's far worse with regards to the record labels in Canada and streaming music services [theglobeandmail.com]. It also looks like this year it stands to get worse:
RIP Last.FM (Score:2)
Well I guess that service is history.
Subscription / Paywall models have been tried for 10 years now. They pretty much fail.
It was nice knowing you Last.FM
Meh. (Score:2)
Or, let me put it this way. I'll start using other music services when they start giving me video game remix recommendation like Last.fm. (To be fair, Grooveshark at least does have a handful of game remixes.)
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With that out of the way, streaming isn't the point of Last.fm. It's all about the scrobbling.
The way I see it, the only value of scrobbling is to get better personalized streams. I don't see the point of uploading all that data just so you can review it later on a web page.
Last.fm knows about my music tastes and provides just plain better recommendations than any other service I've tried.
Agreed, but a list of recommendations isn't very useful on its own. I've been using Last.fm for years specifically because it uses my music tastes to introduce me to new music by playing it. If I just want a web page that says "since you like Band X, you should try Band Y", I can post on a forum and get answers from actual humans
Windows Mobile 7? No such thing! (Score:2)
Windows Mobile 7 phones
There is no Windows Mobile 7 platform. There is a platform named "Windows Phone 7", but one could reasonably argue that the quotes are nessisary around that title, since it is not a Mobile Windows platform. Windows Mobile development did not differ much from developing directly for Windows CE, which is a full fledged member of the Windows OS Family. "WP7" is built on top of the Windows CE platform, but unlike the actual Windows Mobile series no version of the Windows API is exposed to programmers. Instead,
Squeezeboxes (Score:2)
I've got a handful of squeezeboxes, and occasionally listen to last.fm streams on them. Since I'm only an occasional listener, I won't be subscribing. Conversely, the likes of somafm are far more suited to occasional use - you just pay them a few bucks whenever you feel like it.
For all of last.fm's blustering about helping me find new music, I've 'loved' hundreds of tracks, but haven't actually bought much of it - they're actually not that great at actually pushing you towards albums or artists that you mig
Non-US alterantives (Score:2)
Last.FM died for me when Canadians needed to start paying while Americans didn't.
That was also the case for europeans. Are there any alterantives to this for us non-us folks?
Re:Non-US alterantives (Score:4, Informative)
Personally, SomaFM is what I use for streaming, as it suits my needs for music that can play in the background while coding/gaming/whatevering. I only listen to actual music on the road, and I don't stream that.
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Pandora moved to an hour cap per month right around the time I was at the Blackberry developer conference and met one of the Slacker devs. I checked it out and loved it.
Since then I've tried other services but continue to use Slacker. They seem to get what people want.. .free service with commercials or paid service.
The only downside is I can't find Trailer Park Troubadours or Sisters Morales (two bands I played with) on Slacker while I could on Pandora... but in due time I'm sure.
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It's about the necessary distribution/broadcast agreements with the music rights holders in each country.
Example: Germany has (had) a free reign while Austria was left out, even though they're neighboring countries with a common language and currency.
It's just one example. Spotify is also only available in a few of European countries while the rest is left out (or has to become inventive).
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"We're Sorry
Slacker Personal Radio
is not available in your area.
Unfortunately, Slacker Personal Radio is currently only available in the United States. While we are working to extend our licenses to other parts of the world, at this time we can only play music to our listeners within the United States.
If you are getting this message and are in the United States, please use the feedback form to tell us where you are located and the name of your ISP. "
Are you sure that makes Slacker a viable alternative for n
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If you want to assert blame, assert it where it belongs, on the copyright holders & the labels.
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But I don't live in the US...
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Apparently it's not news or stuff that matters until it affects the USA.
Not that it affected me much, I just tossed my MP3 player back on the charger and carried on.
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Err...well, Slashdot.org IS a US centric website/forum you know...
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Re:Interesting. (Score:5, Funny)
Probably the same price they're asking - $3 per month per user.
So about $300.
Re:Enough! (Score:5, Insightful)
sheesh. Wanting compensation for your efforts does not imply the devil is involved. Get a grip.
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I sometimes throw one or the other one while at work with the headphones on...and it is ok for that.
However, from time to time...it is hard to get signal, etc. And the time or two I tried to plug in and use it in the car was less than pleasant with all the dropouts.
A fun toy if you're sitting in one place...but not something that works consistently enough to pay for.
On the other hand...I can see that p
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Yep...I'd just recently discovered them and didn't really see much difference between them and Pandora.
You would if you lived outside the USA.
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It's really easy really! Just download and install Subsonic to your online server, and stream your own music files from wherever, www, Android, iPhone or Windows 7...
http://www.subsonic.com
(I'm not affiliated with Subsonic, only a massive fan and heavy user)
I think the majority of folks don't want to listen to their "own" music via streaming (that's what flash-memory is for), but want services like Last.fm for streaming from a much larger library with recommendation services (and the occasional purchase option for the best songs).
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I think the majority of folks don't want to listen to their "own" music via streaming (that's what flash-memory is for)
I disagree, being able to stream your own collection means you can save that precious flash for something else. What is in your phone isn't unlimited, but what you have at home, is.
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How're you liking Subsonic? I tried setting it up (the trial) a while ago, but never got it working correctly... is it worth the trouble and the cash?
Will it handle MP3, FLAC, AAC and WMA as input? Embedded album art? Rating (writing to the POPM tag) from the Android app? How about ReplayGain? Audioscrobbler (Last.FM scrobbling) support? How well does it handle music on network drives?
Currently I'm using Audiogalaxy, which more or less works, but it's buggy and quite clunky, and there's no support for ratin
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Does audiogalaxy have clients for multiple platforms, a multi-platform server, an awesome web interface, and a GPL behind it [sourceforge.net]?
I can't tell. All I see on audiogalaxy.com is a thing that says "Sign up! It's FREE!"
With subsonic, I don't have to sign up anywhere; I don't have to use subsonic's "services." I just toss the author a few bucks*, install the software, forward the requisite port on my router, and call it a day. Subsonic has its roots in an open-source web-based media player, dating to well before
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I hate commercials and advertising but I refuse to pay! Waaaaaaa!
You say that as if they actually tried advertising and their users complained. But they didn't, they went straight from "free" to "subscription required".
The problem might be that they can't figure out how to put ads in their mobile apps [www.last.fm]. If their programmers are really that talentless, that could also explain why there are so many complaints about the Android app being unstable.
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I thought Last.fm was basically only used by people to track your musical trends and patterns. I really didnt think anyone listened to those stations they have.
And I thought the opposite. Why would you give Last.fm all that information about your listening habits if they weren't going to give you recommendations in return?
After I saw this announcement, I turned off scrobbling. If they're done giving me free streams, I'm done giving them free data.