The Last Word
There has been a lot in the last few days about the announcement by Last.fm about there new business model. Their business model has moved from 30 second clips of songs to full length streams. This however has a restriction of only 3 streams per song per artist. This is a major negative point with the new business model, because once you really get into a song I know I tend to play mine 10 times a day. All these announcements came on the back end of Last.fm signing content agreements will all four major labels.
Artists will be monetized by these streams through the advertising revenue made by the site. I know for a long time Imeem has been attempting to do exactly the same business model and they have had a great deal of success with this. Imeem now has all four major labels signed up and they are making a great deal of money off of the advertising model. Last.fm has also announced that their new revenue model is not exclusive to only the major labels, and anyone on Last.fm can now opt-in and stream their full music for very low royalties.
This all being said I would have really like to see Last.fm slightly change their model. I dont see why there is a limit on the amount of streams per song, unless they have an additional model that allows members to sign up at an additional fee to be able to play the song unlimited times. It is also good to see that Last.fm has partnered with 7digital to offer the music downloads, however a long term solution for Last.fm must be to kill this partnership and enter the download market independently, this might even be a threat to iTunes!
I am still not convinved by Last.fm. The have a great piece of technology in the scrobbler, but I dont think their professionalism on that software has carried over to the site, monetization options and also profile and social network strategy.
