Free On-Demand Listening Has Come To Last.fm

Free
On-Demand Listening Has Come To Last.fm

As of today, you can play full-length
tracks and entire albums for free on the Last.fm website.

Something we’ve wanted for years-for people who visit Last.fm
to be able to play any track for free-is now possible. With the
support of the folks behind EMI, Sony BMG, Universal and Warner-and
the artists they work with-plus thousands of independent artists and
labels, we’ve made the biggest legal collection of music
available to play online for free, the way we believe it should
be.

Full-length tracks are now available in the US, UK, and
Germany, and we’re hard at work broadening our coverage into
other countries. During this initial public beta period, each track
can be played up to 3 times for free before a notice appears telling
you about our upcoming subscription service. The soon-to-be announced
subscription service will give you unlimited plays and some other
useful things. We’re also working on bringing full-length tracks
to the desktop client and beyond.

Free full-length tracks are
obviously great news for listeners, but also great for artists and
labels, who get paid every time someone streams a song. Music on
Last.fm is perpetually monetized. This is good because artists get
paid based on how popular a song is with their fans, instead of a
fixed amount.

We will be paying artists directly.

We
already have licenses with the various royalty collection societies,
but now unsigned artists can put their music on Last.fm and be paid
directly for every song played. This helps to level the
playing-field-now you can make music, upload it to Last.fm and earn
money for each play. If you
make music, you can sign up to participate for free.

We’re not printing money to pay for this-but the business
model is simple enough: we are paying artists and labels a share of
advertising revenue from the website.

Today we’re
redesigning the music economy. There are already millions of tracks
available, and we’re adding more every day. We will continue to
work hard to bring this to everyone in the world.

Take it for a spin.

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