Thursday, January 24, 2008

Last.fm to free the musics


I'm a long time member of Last.fm since the day they only offer simple services. I subscribe to the web just so I can show the musics I played/like to various forums and mailing lists I'm into. Just look at the widget on the right side of this page. The services then developed into more complex and sophisticated and evolve into something very promising in web trend today. I personally admire the goal and the core philosophy of the founders, and I think it is one of the strongest web social network today and still has many room for improvements in the future.
Today as I read my daily morning routine web, I found news about Last.fm. As for 23 January 2008, you can play full-length tracks and entire albums for free on the Last.fm web site. Previously you can only play just the first portion of the song. And now you can freely stream every song you see and hear in the web. Last.fm claimed they have total support from big recording labels such EMI, Sony BMG, Universal and Warner so they have made the biggest legal collection of music available to play online for free. Each time you play one of the song, the artist of the song get paid. This way the artist can get the amount of money based on how popular their song is instead just one fixed amount which sometime can be unreasonable (too big so you spend money for music you do not like or to small so the artist do not get what they deserve).
The other great news is, this "someone play your music and you get paid" scheme not just for those big artists from big labels. You as an individual or come from indie label can also participate in. Just sign up to participate for free. This is a great opportunity for bands and artists to get their songs up and heard by a lot of people and get their name for it.

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