LastFM Charges International Users (UPDATED)

Last.fm, the popular streaming audio and music recommendation service announced today that Last.fm will charge for $4.40 per month for users outside the US, UK and Germany. In these three countries LastFM has been quite successful in bringing in revenue through advertising, but in other countries LastFM has to look for additional fees and will be charged to users.

A very unfortunate move because I myself have been a loyal LastFM user for quite a while and of course this would be quite burdensome for me. But on the other hand LastFM does need to maintain the quality of its services for all users and is 'forced' to charge it to users. I think LastFM itself is a fairly monetizable service and should be able to find other ways to bring in revenue from international users.

Just take the example of our own country, the bands that from Indonesia quite a lot scattered on LastFM and the listener is quite a lot. It would probably make more sense if the $4.40 per month fee was charged to local bands which I'm pretty sure won't mind paying. These local bands may not be the core-business target of LastFM, but rather a special feature or localized content, which of course is also an added value for Indonesian users.

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LastFM then announced something else that might not bother users, but is quite annoying for third-party app providers. LastFM via a blog post announced that it would be closing its API for third-party applications such as Mobbler, and MyStrands. Through the post LastFM emphasized that the opening of the API is only temporary and can change at any time, and LastFM also emphasizes that this API will not be closed tightly but can be used after a cooperation agreement is made.

Two bad news in a one by one service, an indication enough for me to interpret that LastFM will soon be pulling revenue from its service.

source:rwww