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Ta!

The less-than-one-week notice on the "outside the UK/US/DE" was beyond belief, but even more unbelievable is that the subscription fees went up on Monday, in UK and DE (in the US, it somehow remains the same 3 USD). I didn't follow this particular thread (because I didn't want to see any more "last.fm is racist" posts and "get lost you cheap whiners" posts), so I haven't noticed this until now:

Last.fm Radio to require subscription (outside of UK/US/DE)
http://www.last.fm/forum/21717/_/517178/4#f8974008
musicgodlything said... 25 Mar 2009, 13:38
Russ said:
This wasn't very clear in the blog post, but we're also raising the subscription prices slightly on Monday - they'll be going up to Euro3/$3/£3 in all territories (this is the first time we've raised prices in over 4 years).
Still not very clear. So it's going up from Euro 2.50/$3/£1.50 to Euro3/$3/£3? Is that right? ...
Not only not being very clear... it was not mentioned at all, was it? I can't see any USD and GBP symbol in the 24 March post by RJ. (Indeed they speak like New Labour in talking about a change in the immigration policies.) So, they tried to hide the price rise, or what? I'm totally confused, even though I'm in no way affected by this.

And still now, there's no blog post on the "new price" on blog.last.fm. So, they think a "Feedback and Ideas" thread in a support forum is the right place to tell us about that? And in this "by the way ..." manner? Are they Japanese? (We are notorious for beginning important statements by "BTW".) Are they THIS disorganised and stupid? Is this possible?

Of course, they must have sent e-mails to subscribers. It is the way how you do business. I'm not a subscriber so I don't know if they sent e-mails to the existing paying members. Anyway, this is something that should be posted on a static web page of last.fm, in bold 30 or 40pt letters.

What is more unbelievable is that the thread is started not by a staff member but by a user, who is a subscriber, on 24 March. He was apparently asking for other users' thoughts on the compulsory subscription for the last.fm radio outside UK/US/DE. The forementioned Russ's post was made at 18:37, 24 March on this thread - I reckon this is a bit off-topic (even though it's somewhat related) so long as the thread was meant for the changes "outside of UK/US/DE". Did the change-affected users read this post? If I were a UK subscriber, who had his/her raised twice, I would be totally upset and quit. They in the UK have an option in the body of Spotify.

So, what has Russ been doing since he made the post, without "making it clear" on the official last.fm HQ blog? I never thought he and other staff members were this stupid or lazy.

Also on this thread, another user asks if the "free on-demand service" is available outside the three countries after he/she signs up as a subscriber. The "free on-demand" service has been available in the UK/US/DE for quite a long time (and I remember last.fm HQ said it *could* be available in other places *in the future*, but in the long run they gave up. I can understand why and never complained and will complain about it).

To this user's question, Russ replies, "On-demand listening is a licensing minefield and we don't have the capability to support it outside UK/DE/US at the moment."

So we outside the three favoured area are going to pay for "less features than freeloaders from the UK US and Germany".

All I could see from these posts is this - last.fm is finished as a global service (the new "web 2.0" service started in 2000s was effectively killed by the old music business), and more importantly, it is finished as a trustworthy company - there's no sane person in a community business who wants to post something that he/she has got to tell all the users in the support/suggestion forum before posting it on the company's "what's new" page. (I'm becoming a broken record, but the "paying for less feature" issue and the price rise should have been posted on the top page of the last.fm website and their official blog. Users should have been sent e-mails.)

Last.fm has been a success - even a phenomenon - and they've become just an arrogant bunch of idealists who pretend to be as keen on "sharing" as they used to be, and who keep saying/implying there will be "more" in the future.

To be honest, I feel for them. They were defeated. They can no longer keep their ideals. And they are not clever enough to make their ideal model work better (look at the ad layout issue). My four-year-old nephew is the same. They wanted to build something larger than they could do. And they succeeded and failed, at the same time. They succeeded in becoming "big on the Internet", and they failed to keep the "community" alive. They are going to lose a good part of their diverse community.

Then, from Russ's profile page I got to a thread in the Web Services forum that is important not only for the computer whizs but also us ordinary internet users:
http://www.last.fm/group/Last.fm+Web+Services/forum/21604/_/517212/1

This thread is to inform developers who use last.fm radio APIs of a major change. The whole thread is worth a read even if you are not a tech person (neither am I). The topic slightly shifts to "independent music stream radio" from time to time.

In this thread, Russ keeps saying "scrobbling will always be free". It's all too clear that he believes it is the very core of last.fm. I totally agree, but I find it's pointless to keep saying scrobbling is open and free because their business can't do without the massive data sent by the software, Audioscrobbler, from the users. They just can't make it a paid service.

On the pages 3 and 4, an interesting and honest exchange is going on. Russ said on the page one that "It's a restriction imposed by some of our music licensing partners, and not by us." On the page four, a user named caban rightly points out that "If you choose to have partnerships on those terms, you do impose the restrictions on yourself. ... don't blame the changes on your partners, you agreed to the changes by entering or staying in the partnership."

Russ agrees, and says:
I agree. We could operate our site without our major deals, but we would not have all the users we have now. Our manifesto has always been that anyone can come to last.fm and listen to any piece of music (ideally for free). The only way we can implement this is by entering into restrictive agreements with the labels.

Consider the backlash if we announced we'd be dropping 95% of all our content because we don't like the licenses.

Get rid of the major-label content, and you're basically turning Last.fm into Jamendo (which is a great site, but a different idea).
Russ posted the link to Jamendo.com. I find this very sincere.

On the thread too is a user named _voice, who is an independent and non-profit musician (here's the music: very nice synth/electro music), and to his posts, Russ replies: "We hear you. We're definitely going to be looking into more royalty-free (including Creative Commons) music in the future - it's a point we're lacking in at the moment."

In the (near) future, the current music business will without a doubt dies. It is killing itself, as it began to see web streams as their enemy, not as their marketing tool. The process is slow. And it is painful, not exactly for major label execs and marketing persons, but for us music lovers, including last.fm HQ. As long as major labels believe every single music lover in the world can't do without them, the process will not end. Until then ...

Dear last.fm. Be true to yourself. Your ways of telling of change to users who have been a part of community (or communities) are plainly wrong. Big changes, especially when there is something that is fee/charge-related, have to be announced more publicly, and well in advance. I thought they learned this when they did the site renewal in July 2008. No, they didn't. They just got pissed off by the "whiners". They did what they believed right, after a lot of discussion, so they can't be wrong - like Tony Blair in 1999 and 2003.

On the About page of last.fm, we still can read this statement:
http://www.last.fm/about
Luckily, these days it's about letting people choose the music themselves .... Last.fm has always been about making music culture more democratic: everyone listening to music how they want to, when they want to. Without a middle man making your decisions for you.
When one of the staff declared "it's not our decision but theirs that we are imposing you", this text was pronounced dead. It was buried with few mourners around, because few people was told of its death. No flowers.

And last.fm HQ are too afraid of losing more members to tell what is going on exactly. What is called a "democratic culture" when they can't even tell the price rise in a public way for everyone to see?

So, with the words on the about page, last.fm itself should be given a proper burial. They may rise again, like a Zombie or Jesus I don't know. But at the moment, so long, and thanks for the fish.

Dear Last.fm, don't forget to update the "about" page. Put the existing text into a "history" section or whatsoever because the last.fm in that page has been lost and gone, even if you are in the state of denial. You can even try what Woolworths did with their superb archival site to make history history.
http://www.woolworthsblog.co.uk/e-museum/

Manual scrobble - listening to on my foobar2000:
What do I get out of this?
I always try, I always miss
One of these days you'll go back to your home
You won't even notice that you are alone
One of these days when you sit by yourself
You'll realise you can't shaft without someone else
In the end you will submit
It's got to hurt a little bit

-- Subculture, New Order

And then:
You're lying on my bed
you light a sigarette
Is this some kinda joke
I asked you not to smoke
You laugh at me instead

-- If You Don't Get What You Need, dEUS

* Sorry to have comments closed. I will not check so often. I'll go 100% inactive on last.fm in a couple of days so I can't maintain the comment section.

--

Before I stop scrobbling and go inactive, I was taking a look around me for the last time.

First, I wanted to see how adverts were put in Japanese last.fm site. I always use English page BTW.

I logged out so that I wouldn't see the usual member's top page but the general info page, to see if there is a message or something as to the change. No. There's not a word about the paid service. I lost the tiny piece of trust I'd had in last.fm.

Then, I opened a page for a Radiohead track (they are at the top of the chart right now; in fact, this is the "norm". Is Last.fm a Radiohead fan club? When was it that they released an album that was mediocre for them?) to see where the advert is: the advert which they have to rely on to fund the service in UK/US/DE, and which they tried but found unworkable outside the forementioned three countries.

And ... well, it is exactly the same I'm seeing on English page apart from one small fact that the advert here is not of a Michael Jackson concert but of a Japanese shopping site. Anyway if there's anyone who thinks that this works in a non-English speaking country called Japan, I seriously advise to talk to an ordinary Japanese last.fm member. This does not work. Never. Seriously, they should have done more before thinking about forcing users to pay. They say this was not an easy decision. Of course it was not. But it must have been an easy answer - less server traffic (= better service) and more money. Well, how was this sort of advert supposed to work?



Where's the advert? Deep down.

You only need to look at the top right corner (the music player), because you want to listen to the song, full-track or 30 sec preview. If you like the music, you may look for a "Buy this song" link just beside the song title or somewhere, but you don't scroll down for more content.

Even if you scroll down a bit, nobody goes down this deep. You may argue that there are user comments (shoutbox) which must be interesting to fans, but most of those comments are as simple as "nice" and "beautiful", or totally useless rants like "Radiohead VS Muse (or NIN or Coldplay or Oasis or whoever)". Few people would bother with these. And they are written in English. Many (or most of) Japanese users do not bother. They just press the "back" button or "home" key. That means, the advert will not be clicked, or even noticed.

Still worse, the advert is totally buried in the page - the problem is mainly the colours. In other words, the "new" layout and design (since last summer) has been an epic fail, too. Didn't they say they'd have more ads? Look at the blank space on the sidebars. What could I have done with that huge space? If their webpage designer is still around, he or she must be getting paid without doing his/her job properly.

In short, people from last.fm HQ did not do what they could have done, and whine about the revenue being too small outside UK/UK/DE (I read this somewhere, posted by RJ or somebody else with a tiny red icon). So they are unbelievably lazy and disgustingly stupid. Their planning and design failed hopelessly.

Well now, take a look around my neighbourhood. For them with the tiny red square on their avatars, the only users that matter and that they don't want to lose (by making the whole site basically a paid-service radio) are in the UK/US/DE - the key marketing areas. But here in my neighbourhood, even though I mainly listen to UK/USA (mostly independent but commercial) bands, there are less Americans and British than "outsiders".

Neighbour 01 is from Russia (And So I Watch You From Afar, Godflesh, 65daysodstatic, Final).
Neighbour 02 is from Colombia (ASIWYFA, 65dos, Isis, Maybeshewill).
Neighbour 03 is from Australia (Nine Inch Nails, KJ, 65dos, Telefon Tel Aviv).
Neighbour 04 is from Hungary (NIN, Scorn, Coil, Techno Animal).
Neighbour 05 is from France (KJ, Scorn, Godflesh, Final).
Neighbour 06 is from Canada (NIN, Godflesh, Scorn, Killing Joke).
Neighbour 07 is from Indonesia (ASIWYFA, NIN, Godflesh, TTA).
Neighbour 08 is from Italy (NIN, TTA, Helmet, Trent Reznor).
Neighbour 09 is from, finally, UK (NIN, Godflesh, Scorn, 65dos).
Neighbour 10 is from Poland (NIN, Godflash, dEUS, Final).
Neighbour 11 is from Sweden (KJ, Scorn, Godflesh, Final).
Neighbour 12 is from UK (Godflesh, Final, Scorn, 65dos).
Neighbour 13 is from, at last, the USA (Coil, Scorn, Final, Muslimgauze).
Neighbour 14 is from the USA (NIN, KJ, 65dos, TTA).
Neighbour 15 is from ... unstated (NIN, Godflesh, 65dos, Final).
Neighbour 16 is from the USA (NIN, KJ, Godflesh, Coil).
Neighbour 17 is, again, from the USA (Scorn, Coil, Muslimgauze, Techno Animal).
Neighbour 18 is also from the USA (Coil, Muslimgauze, Aphex Twin, Plaid).
Neighbour 19 is from ... unstated (65dos, TTA, Four Tet, Aphex Twin).
Neighbour 20 is from the USA (Godflesh, 65dos, Neurosis, Boris).
Neighbour 21 is from Italy (NIN, 65dos, Godflesh, Final).
Neighbour 22 is from Russia (NIN, Scorn, Coil, Boris).
Neighbour 23 is from Poland (KJ, Godflesh, Final, Coil).
Neighbour 24 is from ... unstated (dEUS, KJ, 65dos, Coil).
Neighbour 25 is from Ukraine (NIN, Godflesh, Scorn, Coil).
Neighbour 26 is from Canada (Coil, Muslimgauze, Distance, Techno Animal).
Neighbour 27 is from Russia (ASIWYFA, 65dos, Maybeshewill, Isis).
Neighbour 28 is from USA (Godflesh, 65dos, Maybeshewill, Final).
Neighbour 29 is from Czech Republic (NIN, Coil, 65dos, S:cage).
Neighbour 30 is from ... unstated (TTA, Isis, Plaid, David Holmes).

Other neighbours are from Latvia, Sweden, Belgium, Greece, Romania, Finland, Spain, Ireland, and UK/USA. I remember I used to have some more Latin American and Asian neighbours.

So, how many of my neighbours will be gone in a few weeks of time?

One staff member, Russ, stated as below on the discussion board:
http://www.last.fm/forum/21717/_/517961/1#f8986161
*emphasis added by me.
Russ said... 26 Mar 2009, 16:25
s_nijland said:
Has Last FM thought about an option for a free 'non-commerical / independent artist' (world wide) radio? So free uploaded music from artists that do not claim royalties that can be listened to for free?
I think this is a great idea, but we're not going to implement this (at least to start with) because royalty-free music constitutes such a small percentage of our catalogue. Hopefully we will have this functionality soon though :).
Fully understandable as a company's statement. But is this what last.fm is supposed to be saying? "A small percentage" of the "community" does matter if you are honestly building a community. Or is this their "social music revolution"? Is this what the "free the music" statement meant? LOL. Revolution, and meet the new boss.

Dear last.fm, drop these New-Labour-esque soundbites, right now. And make the site more Radiohead-and-Coldplay, or Metallica-and-whatsoever.

And they're doing more than ruining their own core concept in "discriminating" users outside three juicy areas. Me and many of my neighbours are basically told that we are a useless bunch for last.fm because the advert they lazily put doesn't work, and that we have to pay for the radio function or stop using it. In their view, the problem is not on their side but ours. In my view, it's quite opposite.

What they can do in UK etc fails in Japan etc - it is their problem. What should they have done? To have ad teams around the world is not realistic. But at least they could have done a good (and professional) site design.

And they should have done something to encourage subscription - something like "subscribe now for special features and get 10 percent discount", running for four weeks. This must have been much better - more workable and less offensive. I would have subscribed if it had been like that.

I have no trust in them now. This is a shame because I like this service and am willing to pay the monthly fee.

I will give no more scrobble data to them. Never. Even if they would put the "free radio" feature back in place. I am very angry.

I thank my friends, neighbours, fellow group members and other users, whom I never met or spoken to, for making my life richer. It was fun. Because my library owes so much to the community, I will not delete my account. I just leave. I may use the embedded player for full-track songs from time to time. Thus, they will no longer recommend new music to me. Last.fm, which was the main music website for me for years, will be one of the alternatives to amazon.com mp3 store's 30 seconds previews.

Thank you, last.fm. It was fun while it lasted. It's a shame I don't feel good to be a last.fm user any longer.

Good night.

username feeding
Tokyo, Japan
approx. 30 March 2009, 0:00 (JST)







*The last radio station was Belgium global tag radio. This was the first tag radio station I listened to after I got this user ID.

*The last track, "Requiem for Last.fm - The Very Last Scrobble", is done by SeanDeigh, and downloadable from this post by him. Nice little piece of music.

Edited: 30 March at 19:00 (JST) to fix some silly mistake (grammar and spelling). There might be some more of those.

Copy of my post on a discussion forum:

******

I found this article linked on mp3.com quite interesting:

March 23, 2009 4:00 AM PDT
What's the real cost of free music?
by Greg Sandoval
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10201802-93.html
... According to information supplied to CNET News by the music executive, who requested anonymity, a recent study showed that music purchases made by people who listen to three free-music sources fell 44 percent from the first quarter of 2005 to the third quarter of 2008. Over the same period, the purchases made by people who listened to four sources declined 49 percent.

The sources of free music included both traditional and new-media sources, such as broadcast and online radio, cable and satellite music channels, as well as TV and Web music video outlets.

There are plenty of questions that the data doesn't answer. ... But what's important to music executives is that the data indicated that the more free music sources a person had, the fewer the number of purchases he or she made. That's not what the record companies want to see.

Click on the link and read the whole article. Cnet is a CBS company, and so it is somewhat strange that Last.fm is not mentioned in the article (Pandora and imeem get mentioned several times), but what is clear is that the execs do not any longer regard ad-supported internet radio as their partner or their powerful marketing tool. I think the problem lies in what they want to sell.

This is what I've just seen while I was listening to my recommendation radio (for the last time). This artist will soon be in Tokyo, Japan, and two venue was listed in the "events" section - UNIT and BULLET'S. Both are in Tokyo for sure, but one Tokyo is in Sweden and the other in Ireland, the page say. I know both venues are in my city - Tokyo, Japan.

I clicked on the links for both dates, and again clicked for both venues.

First I went to BULLET'S page. I looked for "edit" button, and input the exact address, post code and phone number (because they were left blank - I had too look at the venue's site to get this info), and submit ... and the problem was not fixed. I felt helpless. Why this happens? Last.fm has the least reliable database when it comes to placenames?
http://www.last.fm/venue/9016756



It's the same with the other venue, UNIT. The page already had the right street address etc, but it still says Tokyo is an European city.
http://www.last.fm/venue/9010377

And "Chiba, Tokyo, Japan" really gets me ... Chiba is next to Tokyo. Look at this map if you can't trust me.

I laughed too much. I reported these strange problems by "flagging", but don't know if they'd fix this, because Japan is far outside the "profittable" market areas for last.fm.
:-P

This would be my last contribution to last.fm website - trying to fix "Tokyo, Sweden" and "Tokyo, Ireland". Hilariously global, isn't it? Even more hilarious is to think about it - if Tokyo was in Ireland ... Tokyo Guinness!

And no, I would not pay for this web service. They don't even provide a drop-down menu on each page for the venue's location when they rely on users to get the information. Pathetic.

America's South by Southwest (SXSW) festival has lots of music files on its website as a festival sampler. You can have a listen and download each song manually.

If you find it too time consuming, you can download them as one huge torrent. This article below tells you how and where to download.
http://torrentfreak.com/sxsw-2009-on-bittorrent-6-gb-of-free-music-090312/

The files are DRM-free, and RIAA-safe. There are so many bands on the list. Just a few example:
- White Circle Crime Club (from Antwerpen, Belgium; sounds very Belgium alt-rock to me, though not as weirdly beautiful as dEUS.)
- Sloth Scamper (from Taiwan; overall so-called "post-rock" and "shoegazer" feel with a female vocalist.)
- Skibunny (from Belfast, Northern Ireland; well, I've known their music - this song is a pop, electro-rock dancy song.)
- Angry Vs The Bear (from Essex, England; when I first heard of this song, it reminded me of ABBA-esque 70s disco, but ...)
- Parenthetical Girls (from Portland, Oregon, USA; I just like this track.)

Read this dishonestly headlined staff blog:

Last.fm Radio Announcement
Tuesday, 24 March 2009
http://blog.last.fm/2009/03/24/lastfm-radio-announcement
Today we’re announcing an upcoming change to the way Last.fm Radio works in some parts of the world. In the United States, United Kingdom and Germany, nothing will change.

In all other countries, listening to Last.fm Radio will soon require a subscription of €3.00 per month. There will be a 30 track free trial, and we hope this will convince people to subscribe and keep listening to the radio. Everything else on Last.fm (scrobbling, recommendations, charts, biographies, events, videos etc.) will remain free in all countries, like it is now. ...
I am in that some parts of the world, you know. Even though 3 Euros isn't much money here (a cup of coffee at an average cafe), a big change like this have to be announced well in advance (two weeks before at the latest IMHO) and told straight-forwarded, with sincerity and honesty. "Radio Announcement"? For what? It is supposed to be like "the introduction of monthly fee for MOST parts of the world", isn't it? Huh? Now the staff blog post by Richard Jones sounds like New Labour circa 2005.

Scrobbling remains free? Very well. Are we supposed to "pay" for scrobbling? They're not doing it for us. They're doing it for them. They use my scrobble data for what-I-don't-know, as the same Richard Jones posted just a month ago.
... we’ve always been very open and transparent about how your data is used. ... The only type of data we make available to labels and artists, other than what you see on the site, is aggregate data of listeners and number of plays.

And who tags music? Who write artist wiki? Who upload artist pics and album covers?

What I don't like is not the monthly fee. It is this dishonesty. I wanted last.fm to remain true to their original ideal - music, and nothing else. But it seems to have been lost, viewing from this area of some parts of the world.

I don't think I'm going to delete my account, but I am going to uninstall the software on 30 March. I will not give any of my data to this bunch of dishonest hypocrites.


Feel free to use this avatar if you like. I made this in two minutes and it's totally copy-left. :)

Join this group:
http://www.last.fm/group/FREE+IS+FREE

My post is to be found here.

****************
Have just read about how last.fm has suffered from poor ad revenue outside the UK, US and Germany. No wonder they can't get enough ad revenue here. It's not entirely the users' fault. In my country, last.fm links to HMV store, for both physical CDs and digital files. I buy CDs from independent stores (which I support) or amazon (because it's cheaper and more convenient than HMV). HMV Download service doesn't have a large catalogue. And it's not mp3 that they are selling: WMA and ATRAC3. I don't think many people use the link to buy music... I wonder why they didn't find a local partner who can do a decent job about adverts. Maybe they did in the past (and failed: a local last.fm service get axed two years ago), but there's no explanation, so I don't know. All I know is they do not give proper explanation. This is what offends me, not the fee itself.

I have little doubt that this is going to be the album of the year 2009, though there are ten months still coming. And So I Watch You From Afar's first full-length album, "And So I Watch You From Afar", has just been released here in Japan (from XTAL Records). According to the band's MySpace page, the album release date is 13/04/09, so I got my copy approx. five weeks earlier, thanks to my location. (This sometimes happens, making me feel quite good.)

Track list:
1. Set Guitars To Kill
2. A Little Bit Of Solidarity Goes a Long Way
3. Clench Fists, Grit Teeth...GO!
4. I Capture Castles
5. Start A Band
6. Tip Of The Hat, Punch In The Face
7. If It Ain't Broke, Break It
8. TheseRIOTSareJUSTtheBEGINNING
9. Don't Waste Time Doing Things You Hate
10. The Voiceless
11. Eat The City, Eat It Whole

Tracks 1, 2, 8, 9 and 10 are currently on their MySpace page. The album has different takes for some songs. "TheseRIOTSareJUSTtheBEGINNING" sounds very live (superb!), and "the Voiceless" never sounded this beautiful, even though I fell in love with the track when I listened to it on the BBC Radio, or somewhere. I'm now giving it a second spin, and I will do a hundred times over the coming weeks.

Read their interview about a year ago (March 2008):
http://www.drop-d.ie/article.php?article_id=533