Last.fm to Charge for Radio Outside of U.S., U.K. & Germany

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on March 25, 2009 - 12:57pm.

London - CBS-owned (NYSE: CBS) social music discovery service Last.fm has announced that it will begin charging users of its Radio service that do not reside in the U.S., U.K. or Germany.

In all other countries, users will soon have to pay about $4.08 per month for the Last.fm Radio service, which otherwise streams full-length songs for free.

A $3 per month subscription service is also available in the U.S., but the fee basically provides for an ad-free version of Last.fm.

"These are the countries [U.S., U.K., Germany] in which we have the most resources to support an ad sales organization, which is how we earn money to pay artists and labels for their music," Last.fm's Matthew Ogle commented for Wired.com.

Meanwhile, Mashable reports that Last.fm has also disabled all third-party mobile versions of its service.

"You won't be allowed to use our API to stream to mobile phones. This is unfortunately a limitation of some of our licensing agreements," the company wrote on its blog.

http://blog.wired.com/business/2009/03/lastfm-radio-to.html

http://mashable.com/2009/03/25/lastfm-third-party-mobile/