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View Full Version : Last.fm sold to CBS



DrOlaf
May 30th, 2007, 04:41 PM
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6701863.stm

What do people think of this? In the article it says that the last.fm management team will stay in place, and that the site will "maintain its own separate identity" but I wonder how being under corporate ownership will slowly change things.

By the way, CBS paid $240 million for last.fm.

mostwanted
May 30th, 2007, 04:52 PM
This is either really good or really bad. Time will tell.

B0rsuk
May 30th, 2007, 04:59 PM
Bad news. Current Last.fm worked very well. The company I work in has been bought by Boeing, and it started to suck. Suddenly we started to receive a lot of workaholic propaganda (pamphlets having nothing to do with our work, 'Beat the plan' kind of crap eetc). We also started getting genuine spam.

I'm not familiar with CBS, but from what I gather it's just another Old Big Media company. Companies like these don't like change, and it's not below them to buy out competition just to kill it.

FInally, I guess this means Last.fm subject to american laws, RIAA, DCMA and other american inventions. America looks more and more like a dictator country. Wars don't help. There must be reasons why the price of dollar is very low.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::;

I wouldn't be surprised (nor amused) if any of these happened:

- no service for people outside US (look at Pandora)
- linux support dropped, or even deliberate efforts to stop linux from working with last.fm
- aps/plugins become closed source. Big media have natural aversion to GPL, Creative Commons
- outright shutdown of the service
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
I agree that it's either very good or very bad.

galv
May 30th, 2007, 05:10 PM
I'm not sure it's a good thing ...

Bigbluecat
May 30th, 2007, 07:22 PM
We can only wait and see. If they leave the team alone and inject some cash then it may work out well.

If they try to impose big company bureaucracy then they will smother it.

23meg
May 30th, 2007, 11:09 PM
Bad news. Tracks you submit to Last.fm now feed a media giant's database.


I'm not familiar with CBS, but from what I gather it's just another Old Big Media company. Companies like these don't like change, and it's not below them to buy out competition just to kill it.

Fender (Musical Instruments) has a hole in its history called the "CBS era", in which it nearly perished altogether under the ownership of CBS; quality sacrificed to cut costs destroyed the respect the brand had gained over the years. "CBS era" Fenders are looked down on even today, costing much less second hand.

RAV TUX
May 30th, 2007, 11:33 PM
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6701863.stm

What do people think of this? In the article it says that the last.fm management team will stay in place, and that the site will "maintain its own separate identity" but I wonder how being under corporate ownership will slowly change things.

By the way, CBS paid $240 million for last.fm.

Never liked LastFM, so I am indifferent.

I prefer purevolume. (http://www.purevolume.com/)

blackspyder
May 31st, 2007, 01:29 AM
This is gonna suck. First I look for ads (like yahoo music and video) and i look for last.fm to finally start requiring you to pay to use the service.

coder_
May 31st, 2007, 01:36 AM
Yeah, I read that on Digg. I'm an avid Last.fm user, and hope this doesn't affect me, although I think it will, knowing large companies and what they typically do. Lets hope it isn't like Yahoo aquiring Flickr, using their own login accounts, and setting limits on stuff to "be nicer to the servers." Although the Last.fm servers could use a little bit speeding up.

Spr0k3t
May 31st, 2007, 02:39 AM
Haven't used Last.fm ever since they started recommending hideous boy bands. The straw that broke the camels back was when I received a recommendation for a country song. Now with this CBS deal, I'll have to check into canceling my account.

mrgnash
May 31st, 2007, 03:07 AM
I'm extremely wary of this deal, and at the first sign of things going south will jump ship.

AlphaMack
May 31st, 2007, 05:04 AM
Bad news. Tracks you submit to Last.fm now feed a media giant's database.


Quoted for emphasis.

deadlydeathcone
May 31st, 2007, 11:46 AM
Bad news. Current Last.fm worked very well. The company I work in has been bought by Boeing, and it started to suck. Suddenly we started to receive a lot of workaholic propaganda (pamphlets having nothing to do with our work, 'Beat the plan' kind of crap eetc). We also started getting genuine spam.

I'm not familiar with CBS, but from what I gather it's just another Old Big Media company. Companies like these don't like change, and it's not below them to buy out competition just to kill it.

Yes. As much as they assure that the independence of last.fm will be respected, "respect" is a pretty malleable term. They'll definitely work their influence sooner or later, probably when it comes time to justify such a huge purchase to shareholders who, as we all know, will certainly act with only the integrity of last.fm in mind. ;)

I'm sure it will be pretty beneficial in the short term, though. Their development pace is quite fine at the moment (steady, but slow), but they could certainly use some significant server upgrades, plus they've been putting off a large refactoring of their database for a while now due to lack of manpower.


I agree that it's either very good or very bad.
Some of both, probably. I just really hope they don't end up turning the thing into Mtv 3.0.

gnomeuser
May 31st, 2007, 11:51 AM
Bad news. Tracks you submit to Last.fm now feed a media giant's database.


What pray tell me stops this from happening already, you send your information to last.fm and it gets published on the internet. What stops a corporation from grabbing your rss feed and creating said giantic database?

DJ Wings
May 31st, 2007, 12:15 PM
As a last.fmer, I can only pray that this won't sting too much...

OffHand
May 31st, 2007, 01:32 PM
What pray tell me stops this from happening already, you send your information to last.fm and it gets published on the internet. What stops a corporation from grabbing your rss feed and creating said giantic database?

That is exactly why I never started using it.

Just because you are paranoid doesn't mean they aren't watching you.

Wartooth
May 31st, 2007, 04:19 PM
I just got on board with them this year, and as a subscriber. Now...I'm not thrilled. I am not going to bail on them immediately, but I have a feeling I'll be wanting to get out sooner rather than later with CBS at the helm. Hopefully they won't change the ease with which you can cancel and delete your account. Yet another thing to consider.

I'm pretty pro-capitalist, free-market, all that libertarian type jazz, but mostly because I am willing to do things like NOT set foot in a Wal-Mart store for the past six years, drive past a big box to go to a smaller store, etc. unlike a lot of folks who complain about the very beasts they feed. I am also not knee-jerk reactionary. I wait and see. I'll wait...and see...I hope that I will not dislike what I am about to see. I have really, REALLY enjoyed last.fm so far and have discovered some pretty great and obscure stuff through the site. It would be tragic to see that change.

And as for the feeding a corporate database with my musical tracks - GOOD. Let them see how much stuff I listen to that is not even in English (German, Latvian, Estonian, Finnish, Punjabi, etc., anyone? ;) ) and certainly NOT part of the RIAA.

Maybe I seem like a walking contradiction about it all, but so be it.

I'm not thrilled with the purchase, but I'm not unsubscribing just yet.

Arathorn
May 31st, 2007, 05:57 PM
What pray tell me stops this from happening already, you send your information to last.fm and it gets published on the internet. What stops a corporation from grabbing your rss feed and creating said giantic database?
That is exactly why I never started using it.

What do you suppose they can do with that data, blackmail you?

You say you only listen to good music but we've got evidence you've listened to Britney Spears twice!Seriously, I'll abandon my account once their service starts to suck, and not a minute earlier (I don't believe you can delete your account).
I must admit I'm not overly joyed with this news though.

23meg
May 31st, 2007, 07:01 PM
What pray tell me stops this from happening already, you send your information to last.fm and it gets published on the internet. What stops a corporation from grabbing your rss feed and creating said giantic database?

I think RSS feeds don't contain all the info you submit, and they've been introduced only recently, meaning that a great percentage of all data accumulated so far in the database isn't available via them. It would also be quite a task to parse huge loads of RSS or plain HTML to grab that information, and to utilize it without consent would perhaps have legal consequences if discovered.