Last.Fm free mobile service going bye bye
Music News | Feb 7th, 2011
All good things must come to an end I guess. Last.Fm is no longer offering a free radio service on mobile devices. On February 15th, you’ll need to fork over 3 dollars a month to listen to Last.Fm on your Droid, iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, etc. You can still listen to free streaming music on their desktop application or on the website, but not on your phone. It will cost $36 a year, just the same as Pandora’s subscription based service. But Pandora still has free, ad-heavy mobile apps, as well as Slacker Radio. Let me be the first to say, this freakin’ sucks!
Last.Fm was great because it remembered what songs you listened to, and can skip as many tracks as you want. Pandora and Slacker Radio only have a few tracks you can skip until your allotment was up. I always hated that so that’s one of the biggest reasons why I loved Last.Fm. Since I got rid of Sirius XM, this still might be an option considering 36 bucks isn’t that much money to spend. But if I’m going to spend that, their service better get ten times better and not repeat the same music over and over. Not sure fans will pony up the dough since there’s still a few free options out there.
Nothing is free anymore, well except if you want to get paid as a blogger or photographer, then you’re up shit’s creek.
On February 15, the radio service built into Last.fm mobile apps and on home entertainment devices will become an ad-free, subscriber-only feature.
Last.fm Radio will remain free on the Last.fm website in the US, UK and Germany and for the US and UK users of Xbox Live and Windows Mobile 7 phones. We’ll also continue to offer radio for free via the Last.fm desktop app.
I want to explain why we’re making some of these changes.
On the Last.fm website an ad-supported, free-to-listeners model is what supports our online radio services in the US, UK and Germany. In other markets and on emerging mobile and home entertainment devices, it is not practical for us to deliver an ad supported radio experience, but instead, we will migrate to what we believe is the highest quality, lowest cost ad-free music service in the world.
[Last.Fm]
