giantdays

Internet radio giant Last.fm has now joined up with all four major recording companies (Universal Music Group, Sony/BMG, Warner and EMI - as well as CD Baby, IODA, the Orchard, Naxos and more than 150,000 independent labels and artists. The agreement between the companies comes with a change though.

“Last.fm’s free-on-demand service will be advertiser supported, allowing clients many unique opportunities to reach a highly targeted and engaged audience”. - cnn

Last.fm was acquired by the CBS Corporation on May 30 of 2007 and has attracted the attention of many demographics such as the college student, the office worker, the leisure music tester, Big Foot, your mothers hip friend that smokes pot, and of course the executives in those cozy black leather seats. (update - corinthian brown leather seats) Last.fm has launched a somewhat interesting “Artist Royalty Program” that has the labels in a stir of doubtfulness. This becomes a good thing for the plethora of unsigned artists that already seem to be dominating the true independent music “scene” or “revolution”. So every time a song that the unsigned artists uploaded song gets played he or she is paid by Last.fm a royalty check. In theory one can make mad money off this but the problem, yes this is problematic because soon enough Last.fm will see many and many more acts, thus making it challenging to advertise with the “new” industry standard. I personally love the idea making music easily accessible to the mass, I only hope this could work so that everyone can get broke off you feel me.

“We’re building a platform to help redesign the music economy, enabling artists and labels to earn revenue according to how people listen, rather than how they buy,” said Last.fm’s other co-founder, Felix Miller. “Now we can offer the arrangement to unsigned music creators too. For the first time, anyone can upload tracks and get paid when those tracks are played. It’s a whole different model — one that benefits the artists, labels and advertisers - but most of all the listeners.”

Time will truly tell; Last.fm has not yet executed plans for tight lipped Last.tv but expect them to use a entirely different business model and medium.