CBS reports early success with Last.fm music streaming

Fresh off launching an ad-supported streaming music service for its Last.fm property, CBS Interactive is already touting success.

According to a release from CBS on Friday, there were 85 percent more unique listeners on Last.fm on Wednesday, January 23--the day that CBS Corporation and Last.fm announced the service--than there had been on the previous Wednesday. The next day, Thursday, saw an 80 percent increase from the previous Thursday, which CBS took as evidence that it wasn't just a single-day phenomenon.

Last.fm had previously offered streaming music primarily in 30-second clips. But thanks to licensing agreements with all four major music labels, the social music service now allows users to stream a song three times for free before being given the option to purchase the song at a number of digital music stores.

Actual traffic to Last.fm hasn't jumped quite so much: CBS reports 27 percent more unique visitors and 45 percent more page views over the same time period. That suggests that existing Last.fm visitors are indeed tuning into the new music offering, but that it might not be boosting membership numbers quite yet. Claiming early success, however, is important PR for CBS: many have lost faith in ad-supported streaming music. Once hyped as the solution to both peer-to-peer piracy and the iTunes monopoly, enthusiasm has faded as start-ups like SpiralFrog have made disappointing debuts.

CBS executives have remained optimistic, suggesting that big-media muscle may be the secret to making free streaming music work online.

[dascha1]

You Can Never Be Too Early

Is it "early success" or "early attempts" at music-on-demand?

Thanks! :)

[sbwinn]

If you think iTunes is a monopoly. . .

. . . you don't know what the word monopoly means. It is exclusive
control of a commodity or service. The fact that we are talking
about a competing music distribution service shows pretty clearly
that iTunes is not a monopoly.

[MyRightEye]

As a musician, I am more excited by these OpenSourceTrack.com guys

OST is about bringing freedom of creativity to musicians and
their music. The artist of an OST track has agreed to make some
or all of their tracks open source, or at a greatly reduced
copyright control. This means that not only can you download
the fully produced track for free, but the track's written score,
guitar tab charts and the pre-mixed individual instrument
tracks. OST tracks may be used for any non-commerical
purpose without additional license. The artist retains the
copyright to their music, and still collects royalties if the song is
used commercially. Live performance of OST tracks does not
count as commercial use.

Budding musicians can forget about sidestepping around
copyright issues when swapping music and guitar tabs by using
OST tracks. OST tracks may be performed live, remixed and
freely distributed, and derivatives of OST tracks may be used in
your own compositions.

From http://OpenSourceTrack.com

[Renegade Knight]

My use for Last.fm

Mostly figuring out what album you can find a specific song on. Actually using it to listen to music? It's handy to see if you like other music that an artist does instead of the one hit you know. That's about it so far. It would take a remodel of the site to be useful beyond that.

[partytildawn-20159620461052270]

30 Second Clips Still in Place

I just visited last.fm, and I found that the information contained in the article to be inaccurate. The site was still only streaming 30 second clips not the full song as the article stated.