CBS Finally Spills The Beans On Its Plans For Last.FM

Posted by Leslie Poston on January 23rd, 2008

After purchasing Last.FM for a cool $280 Million USD last year, CBS kept its plans for the company close to the vest. The company held a press conference today to reveal the direction it was taking its acquisition. Some sites have speculated that the big secret was going to be video on demand, but that wasn't the case (at least not yet).

The news from CBS today was that they were making Last.FM into a streaming audio service. After hearing announcements that CBS has been signing deals with all of the major labels in past weeks, this should not have come as a surprise to me, but it did. The last holdout was SonyBMG, and they signed with CBS recently. Once CBS has all four major labels and over 150,000 of the independents signed on they were able to take the next step.

Some fine print from the deal includes the fact that it will be supported by ads and the songs will be complete, full length songs. The killer fine print, at least for this music lover, is that each song is limited to a measly three plays each. I don't know about you, but if I have to suffer through ads I want unlimited plays. It seems the CBS Interactive head, Quincy Smith agrees and said CBS is looking to extend the plays.

While we wait for that possibility to happen, I hope CBS has planned for the contingent of illegal downloading music lovers out there who will try and record the song now that they know it is play limited. CBS should have just made it unlimited plays right out of the gate, I think, to avoid the problem. I think there are more people than just myself who think three plays is a poor tradeoff, especially iTunes users who can stream iTunes radio already and users of other existing streaming players.

The new service will be rolling out in the US and the UK, but won't get to the rest of the world until it has been out for a while. The three play limit is also restrictive for the artists on Last.FM, as the labels and artists get paid by the listen. A label will make as much money as it ever has, having multiple work by multiple artists on the site, but an artist is currently limited to three revenue hits per listener, per song.

Last.FM will be promoted at the Grammy's this year, which should boost the release for CBS. There is no word yet on how this will affect the experience of current Last.FM users or how current Last.FM widgets may change. The company did let on that video was not completely out of the question, and that some artists will already have music videos streaming as well.

The interface is set to remain simple - search, select and play. Once your plays are up, Last.FM will stay true to its roots as a recommendation service, offering the listener similar choices to stream. You can read more about the plans on the official Last.FM blog.

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