Dave Horvath
23 Jan 2008 15:10
Touting its newest service as the world's largest free music service, Last.fm has signed deals with record labels to pay royalties towards their catalogs of music. The four big labels have all signed as well as over 150,000 independent labels. Users of this service will be able to listen to each Track, streamed, up to 3 times for free. After that, if the consumer likes what they hear, they'll be obligated to purchase it.
If users of this service decide to buy the song after the introductory period, they will be provided direct links to several music services out there, including the likes of iTunes and Amazon. Last.fm will share profits of these sales and that is how they predict they can pay for the cost of running such a service.
One of the original founders of Last.fm before it was sold to CBS, Richard Jones has said, "We want to make music available free and legally to whoever wants it, while rewarding the artists at the same time." He was later asked whether users would not prefer to own music and be able to put it on a portable player rather than just being able to stream it, he said, "The way people consume music is changing - sometimes you just want to listen to it there and then."
Source:
BBC