Last January, social music site Last.fm introduced its free on-demand music initiative called “Free the Music.” I thought this would be a great opportunity to look at how much of an impact the service has had on the music industry, and how much it has progressed since its introduction.
When Free the Music was launched, Last.fm boasted that it would be offering the largest legal collection of free, streamable music on the Internet. It was also revealed that artists would be paid directly each time a track is played. “The business model is simple enough,” wrote staff member Richard Jones. “We are paying artists and labels a share of advertising revenue from the website.” He acknowledged the support of like EMI, Sony BMG, Universal, and Warner, but pointed out that major labels wouldn’t be the only ones to benefit from this system. Anyone can upload their own music to Last.fm and earn money every time someone clicks play. “Today we’re redesigning the music economy,” Jones claimed.
Music that can not only be played for free, but pays an artist each time someone does so may sound too good to be true. Indeed, there is a catch. “Free” tracks can only be played three times before reverting to thirty-second previews available for most songs on Last.fm. In the announcement, a paid subscription service which would allow unlimited play was said to be coming soon. When exactly is soon, though? Free the Music has been in the beta stage for ten months. The Last.fm subscription page shows the unlimited listening subscription as “coming soon.” Promises to relax the restrictions for non-subscribers and extend the service to countries other than the US, UK, and Germany have apparently been forgotten, as well.
Still, new full-length tracks are being added every day. Many songs are uploaded when they are released as singles for extra promotion, and often non-album songs and remixes are uploaded presumably because it is less of a risk to make them freely available. Sometimes, even full albums are uploaded for streaming. Below you can see Swedish pop star September’s 2005 album In Orbit featuring all full tracks.
Free the Music has definitely generated plenty of interest. It seems like everyone is on board with the service except Last.fm. So what happened? Last.fm has hinted that it is struggling to keep its services free, so it’s possible that financial troubles are keeping the company from expanding the service. Over the summer it increased the number of ads on the site to keep up with licensing fees.
Last.fm clearly understands the power of $0.00. I’ve enjoyed it since May 2007 without paying a cent. Last.fm offers a personalized web radio service much like Pandora which streams full-length tracks based on a given tag, artist, group, or the user’s listening habits. It also recommends free downloads which are similar to tracks the user has played. Through features like these I've discovered more than half of my favorite artists, including September, Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Lady GaGa, and Goldfrapp.
Last.fm takes advantage of “freemiums,” as well. It offers a $3 monthly, basic subscription (not to be confused with the forthcoming unlimited listening subscription), which boasts no ads, beta access, streamable playlists, public radio stations based on subscribers’ favorite tracks, and a recent visitors tracker.
If Last.fm truly wants to redesign the industry, I think it should take a risk and move forward with this project. If they need reassurance that it will work, they should look to Gerd Leonhard's Music 2.0. Unlimited listening could work like the “feels-like-free” model encouraged by Leonhard, in which music is like water. He describes the future of music in these terms: Exposure + Discovery + Community = Revenue. Exposure, discovery, and community are what Last.fm is all about, and if the talk of financial troubles is true, it needs revenue. If free is really the future of business, I think Last.fm has the power to take us there.
Source: Free the Music
1 comment:
I love last.fm! In addition to the full tracks, they also have (or at least used to have) a listing of all the free downloads on the site by tag or genre. It's a little hard to find on the site, but it's a huge collection of (usually indie) tracks. Takes a little to dig through, but definitely can be worth it.
There's a little section at the bottom of the last.fm page, too, called Playground, which has features not on the main site. For instance, there is a chart of "Most Unwanted Scrobbles", or the songs people most often deleted from their profiles. Topping that chart this week is Britney Spears- "Piece of Me".
Post a Comment