The First April Joke or radio for money? I believe that's true and only US, UK, DE free? all the third world, Africa, Europe and the East, the poors of the world will pay? from 192 states? In the times of the hardest economy crise in the history of the world? Will Last FM loose 1,263,128,942 internet users?
Real statistics about the internet:
Territory Internet Users US 220,000,000 UK 43,221,464 DE 55,221,183 Rest of World 1,263,128,942 Last FM may loose up to 80% of their listeners.
Pandora did the same. Interesting to know if their decision was wise from the $ point of view. Last FM, larger and worlwide, with classical and folk music from all over the world, was built to be internationally. So I think that they will loose a lot, as Talleyrand (or Fouche) said: "This is worse than a crime, this is a blunder."
mirel "Music, feelings of happiness, mythology, faces worn by time, certain twilights and certain places, want to tell us something, or they told us something that we should not have missed, or they are about to tell us something; this imminence of a revelation that is not produced is, perhaps, the esthetic event." Jorge Luis Borges
It’s not a big problem to me. €4.00 per month is not a lot of money in non-Third World countries and the facts remain that web services like last.fm, Facebook or Digg don’t do well by simply being advertisement driven.
To do anything has always cost something, time, money or resources, and last.fm is a great service so I personally don’t see it as an issue that I’d have to pay a little bit.
But they should have been more fair and not given special status to three (rich) countries — ungrateful users who want everything for free will exist regardless of nationality — stick to reason for ALL countries so all of us others don’t feel totally mistreated. That part sucks.
Baroque Era
This is worse than a crime