Posted 10/06/09 at 09:33:13 AM by Paul Lilly

Last.fm has officially left the confines of your computer and handheld gadgets and has hitched a ride in car radios. This doesn't come as a surprise, since parent company CBS announced last month that it planned on launching a new radio station called "Last.fm Discovers."

Powered entirely by the Last.fm weekly charts, Last.fm Discovers is kicks off in four major U.S. cities, including New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago.

CBS said programming would include "Last.fm Recommends with Bryan VanGelder", which is a program that plays a popular song on Last.fm followed by two related and recommended songs, "Last.fm Discovers with Sat Bisla", which focuses on weekly charts, and "Shouts", in which comments left on Last.fm about specific songs will be read aloud followed by playing the song the comment is about.

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Posted 02/24/09 at 10:10:48 AM by Paul Lilly

The RIAA was pretty upset to learn that the unreleased U2 album "No Line on the Horizon" had been leaked onto Bit Torrent last week, so much so that rumors surfaced saying the RIAA was on the hunt for for anyone who may have downloaded the album via Last.fm's Scrobbler service, according to news site TechCrunch. Worse yet, the weblog said a tipster informed them that "Last.fm recently provided the RIAA with a giant dump of user data to track down people are scrobbling unreleased tracks." And what did Last.fm have to say on the matter?

"On Friday night a technology blog called TechCrunch posted a vicious and completely false rumor about us: that Last.fm handed data to the RIAA so they could track who’s been listening to the “leaked” U2 album," Last.fm wrote in a blog. "I denied it vehemently on the Techcrunch article, as did several other Last.fm staffers. We denied it in the Last.fm forums, on twitter, via email – basically we denied it to anyone that would listen, and now we’re denying it on our blog."

The blog entry, which is titled "Techcrunch are full of s**t," goes on to say Last.fm takes "very seriously" being entrusted to users' listening data and that it will "never share personally identifiable data such as email and IP addresses." The blog also pointed out that all the press coverage has caused a spike in the number of people listening to U2 recently, so its record label should actually be patting itself on the back for a successful launch.

In any event, Last.fm users can officially exhale, your private data remains safely tucked away on a server in London.

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Posted 02/22/09 at 05:21:01 PM by Justin Kerr

The unreleased U2 album "No Line on the Horizon" was leaked onto Bit Torrent last week, and the resulting downloads have sent the RIAA into a frenzied fit. New rumors reported by TechCrunch have revealed that the recording industry might be looking to track down people who downloaded the album using Last.fm’s Scrobbler service. Scrobbler keeps track of songs playing on a user’s computer, regardless of the program used to do so. This information is then shared with Last.fm’s servers which broadcast’s playlists, along with recommending new tracks. According to unconfirmed sources within Last.FM, the RIAA contacted and obtained the logs of users who may have played the leaked U2 tracks. Apparently the logs also contain information that “can be used to identify individuals and will likely be shared with 3rd parties that have relationships with the RIAA.”

Despite the fact that neither Last.fm, or its parent company CBS has yet to confirm these rumors, its privacy policy certainly gives them the legal backing  to do so. According to the policy, “…. your record collection (including your skipping history) may be viewed by all other users of Last.fm (who may include other organizations or representatives of other organizations who have registered as Last.fm users) and that they may easily associate this information with your Last.fm username.” Users of the service must be understandably worried. Particularly because they are dealing with an organization which historically solves these types of disputes in a court of law.

Given the fact that that no legal precedent would force Last.fm ito release a user’s personal information, should they be protecting its customers from the RIAA here?  Let us know what you think after the jump.

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Posted 02/17/09 at 02:15:00 PM by Michael Brown

Listen to the mind-numbingly repetitive radio programming on the FM dial long enough, no matter which genre you prefer, and you might conclude that only a handful of recording artists are worth listening to.

Fire up your PC and tune in to Internet radio, on the other hand, and you’ll discover an embarrassment of riches, nearly all of which you can enjoy for free and without—or at least with very little—commercial interruption. In fact, there’s so much music that you might find yourself overwhelmed. That’s where the music discovery services Last.fm, Pandora, and Slacker come in. All three services help you discover new music based on the songs and artists you express a preference for. As interesting as that concept is, what’s even more remarkable is that each service takes a completely different approach to the mission. Let’s take a look at all three.

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Posted 07/11/08 at 11:14:38 PM by Paul Lilly

Garage bands, practiced shower singers, local sensations, and other unsigned artists can now get paid through Last.fm's Artist Royalty Progam (ARP). Last.fm announced the service back in a January, and this week the service went live. More than 450,000 tracks have been uploaded to coincide with the launch, and independent artists who register and upload tunes can start accruing royalties any time their songs get played through the site's ad-supported streaming music feature or Web radio.

Martin Stiksel, Last.fm co-founder, said "This is a bid day for independent artists. We're leveling the playing field by offering them the same opportunities as established bands to make money from their music. The young musician making music in a bedroom studio has the same chance as the latest major label signing to use Last.fm to build an audience and get rewarded. The Artist Royalty Program is another revolutionary step towards helping musicians take control of their music -- and, more importantly, make a living from it."

Click through the jump to find out who's urging indie labels to steer clear of the royalty program.

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Posted 11/15/07 at 08:39:18 PM by Michael Brown

Too lazy to copy music to your MP3 player? Check out the new Slacker Radio.

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