February 7th announcement - Future of streaming on mobile and hardware devices.

I got the email stating that I would be receiving a three month subscription for free starting on February 15th, but when I go into the (newly updated as of today) app, it says I have to pay and only get the the 50 track trial. What gives, last.fm?

Feeling sad, like many others, having evangelised a lot about your service. You were an example of the promise that internet radio had all those years ago when I first talked about it, quirks and all. I'd still love to know why the service is so obsessed with Andy Bell of Erasure.

I won't be subscribing - thanking me for being an early adopter and then offering me a black icon for $3 (or £3!!!....errr....) doesn't add up. Bye for now!

To be honest, I'd rather just pay the tenner a month for Spotify premium, which benefits me in lots of other ways too...

nappy_steph said:
I got the email stating that I would be receiving a three month subscription for free starting on February 15th, but when I go into the (newly updated as of today) app, it says I have to pay and only get the the 50 track trial. What gives, last.fm?Can you let me know which app you are using?

I always listen to last.fm through my Logitech Squeezebox. Now that its stopped working. There are plenty of online radio stations that do not charge.

Mobile devices i can maybe understand, if you guys just want to follow spotify like sheep, but thats a different service.
A blanket cut of all the different methods of using last radio? That's a really shitty thing to do. I always used to recommend last.fm to people, I've enjoyed using last.fm for more than 5 years, but this feels like a big stab in the back.

I thought that as I use my Last.fm account on my iPod Touch via a wirless connection to my broadband internet there would be no need for a subscription? In ther words I thought the charge only applied to mobile phones?

Have I misunderstood the terms or is it the case that I now have to pay a subscrition even though I am streaming from the web via wifi to my iPod touch??

electrophile888 said:
Scrobbling is pretty much the only thing that keeps me here these days.

Worryingly I can actually seeing them charging for this service, maybe not any time soon, but I can see a tiered version of payment, £1 a month for scrobbling and upwards...

Knapster01 said:
....but I can see a tiered version of payment, £1 a month for scrobbling and upwards...That's not going to happen.
How knows how knows... the speed you make changes to you policies is rather rapid. cant you guys make you mind and announce whole changes so people dont waste thier time with lastfm?

PS still dont understand what is wrong with loved tracks. Knapster01 can you explain?

Knapster01 said:
....but I can see a tiered version of payment, £1 a month for scrobbling and upwards...That's not going to happen.

Well, that's a relief at least.

You know what might be a novel idea?
How about... if I request a "radio station" for a particular artist...
maybe - something by that artist gets played... Within an hour ??

No?? It must be me...
Yeah, I'm sure subscribing and paying for mobile use would bring better results. Not Likely.

No responses here, I've seen this before. Bunch of idiots in a conference room making decisions, piss off the customers and don't respond to them.

This is their model for monetizing the operation. Ha!

Pandora works great, high fidelity too.

Right now I subscribe to Slacker, Last.fm, and MOG because each service offers enough unique value to justify their costs. Together the three cover my music needs, from music discovery to listening to a precise playlist of favorite songs.

For this comprehensive service, I pay about $17 a month, or around $200 a year. The same amount I pay for NetFlix, and about 25% of my cable bill. Alternatively, I could have purchased about 21 used CDs or 15/16 new. To me, the value proposition is CLEARLY in the favor of the three streaming/download services.

Even though I have a big, diverse CD collection already, my musical horizons have been significantly broadened. I can now explore different artists and genres IN DEPTH, instead of having to find new music piecemeal through random friends and blogs. Now I almost never regret CD/MP3 purchases, because I already know FOR SURE that I really like the music I'm buying.

All the folks complaining about having to pay $3 a month are just cheap, period. The free ride is over folks, deal with it. Do you want musicians to get paid or not? Seriously, there's just no excuse to whine about having to pay a few dollars/pounds/euros if you actually value the music. If you genuinely can't afford a little cash, then deal with the limitations that the free services put on you without the constant whining. Take Pandora for instance. In exchange for the free streaming you get a music collection that is by far the smallest of all the major music services, sticks commercials between every three songs, limits skips and constantly repeats songs and chunks genres. So yeah, you get what you pay for.

Then the threats of "Oh I guess I'll have to go back to torrents" are beyond tired. Go ahead and say, "I can't afford that new Macbook Pro, so I'll just steal one", see where it gets you. Or flip it. I bet whoever pays you to do your job values your work less than you value the music you listen to. So how about they pay you less, I mean they could always get another worker for less, right? If you think not, you're kidding yourself.

"All the folks complaining about having to pay $3 a month are just cheap, period. The free ride is over folks, deal with it."

No, it isn't. That's why this is such a boneheaded move! Competing services are *still* streaming for free, as Last.fm takes a bold, pioneering step toward irrelevance.