Will allow users to listen to any song whenever they wanted, up to three times, and makes song capture programs like FreeMusicZilla even better.
CBS Corp. is trying to get the most from its acquisition last year and is trying to make it more like radio – free and supported by advertising – yet allows users to choose what music they listen to.
Last.fm has been very popular for streaming music fans despite the fact that it rarely plays exactly the music you want.You tell it what artist you like, and it plays music from similar artists and genre, but never your spot on favorite. The idea was to give users a way to explore new music and learn about other artists they might like.
The new plan now allows users to play specific songs of their choice on-demand. Visitors will be able to play a song three times before they’re prompted to buy it through partners like Apple’s iTunes or Amazon.com. Last.fm co-founder Martin Stiksel said the company is making 3.5 million songs available for on-demand play.
Quincy Smith, the president of CBS’s Interactive unit, said the company would prefer to offer more free music, but said there was a “healthy tension” over this with the music labels.
“They want a subscription-based service more and they want downloads,” Mr. Smith said. “I want to pay attention to the users, and the first thing the users want is free streaming.”
I like the plan for I think it continues down the path of ad-supported music which I think is the future of the music industry considering so many have long grown accustomed to getting free content using P2P and file-sharing services.
As a side note, for those of you who use FreeMusicZilla to download tracks from Last.fm this new on-demand capability for the site is even more welcome news.
Related Posts
- Last.FM’s Free On-Demand Music Boosts CD and Download Sales
- iTunes to Begin Offering Ringtones
- iTunes May Begin Offering Movie Rentals this Fall
- Universal’s ‘Total Music’ Plan Will Offer Free On-Demand Music
- Download Music From Last.Fm, Pandora, MySpace, and More with FreeMusicZilla
Loading ...
We should be grateful that something like this is finally accomplished. I don’t think that Last.FM deserves that you promote FreeMusicZilla in the same article. If you want mp3 for free use p2p. Don’t rip Last.FM they need our support!!
@Kewbase
Support how? Clicking on ads? Just listening to their music isn’t really “support” now is it?
Finally we have a solution by which we can listen for free and still the artist gets paid. And you promote a way to circumvent this by ripping the music? Doesn’t look fair to me.
I am surprised the labels didn’t require an encrypted stream to prevent ripping. Instead it just send B64 encoded xml playlist file with li nks to MP3 and song information.
The only way you support this service is either clicking whatever ads they may have or buy into the subscription service these limited free streams promote.