I was working listening to last.fm as every day when suddenly the music stopped and the email notification icon appeared. “Your free trial to Last.fm Radio is about to end.” said the email. “It is already over” though I.
Who wants to give me a one-year subscription to last.fm? It is only 27 € (if you pay in US$). My username is plbeaudoin.
I am also open to suggestion for a free (as in speech) service that works as well as last.fm, has content and has built-in support in apps…
Update: Thanks to Benjamin Podszun for his gift! On a site note: last.fm, while I understand that the concept of subscription is new for you, the page describing the status of your subscription is 1) very hidden, 2) lacks details.
Try Spotify
http://www.spotify.com
has loads of content, is a beautifully written app and is free (although there are some 15-30 second audio ads every 30 mins.)
Sorry for the duplicate post there is no edit during moderation, Spotify is free (as in beer) service, however check out Jamendo (www.jamendo.com) for free music licensed under the creative commons.
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http://libre.fm is a project by a bunch of FSF people (and others) to create an AGPLv3 version of last.fm, and add a bunch more features as well. They are last.fm API compatible, and can be used by apps that don’t support it specifically right now by adding an entry to your hosts file. I think this, not Jamendo et al, is where the future is.
You could also make the shift over to http://libre.fm fairly soon, it’s not quite there yet, but we have last.fm compatible audio scrobbling and should have compatible streaming within a week or so (we only stream free-as-in-speech tracks) and the majority of existing players can be made to work with it fairly easily.
@Craig: I agree - except http://libre.fm will have integration with Jamendo.
The question of whether the service is free software is irrelevant to the question of whether you have to pay for it. Even if there is no licence fee for the music, running the service has costs which need to be recouped.
Certainly services like libre.fm can replicate the recommendation service that last.fm provides, but unless I can casually sample recommendations, the utility of recommendations is greatly diminished. And that implies commercial licensing of music, which again has to be paid for. (Unless you limit yourself to freely licenced music, which I sincerely doubt you would be willing to given how limited it is currently.)
I welcome people trying to create AGPL software, and I’ll start using libre.fm if my music player supports it, but I’m not going to give up last.fm while all my friends use it and while it has years more data about my listening habits, and I bet that goes for most people.
Enjoy last.fm and thanks for your open source (Gnome, Maemo) activities.
I’ll buy you one if you buy me a €50 iTunes voucher.
I feel the need to point out that Spotify operates exactly the same subscription model
WRT the subscription page, I’ll prod the right people and we’ll sort that out. What kind of information are you looking to see on that page?
This is not Last.fm’s fault, it is the music labels, only persons within the US (possibly other) can recieve last.fm streaming for Free, it’s sort of like Hulu and their streams. i know it sucks but please realize it’s not last.fm’s fault as they don’t own the content they stream and must do what the content copyright holders say or they don’t have a service. again i know it sucks. I’m in the US and i haven’t had any issues…
Yep, the subscription page is very hard to find imo, _although_ the concept isn’t new at all. I’m subscribed for about 1.5 years now, before now it was just optional (and a way to avoid ads, get a better position fighting for streaming resources and to give back to the project). I currently have ~2 years of subscription left - and I live in Germany, where it still would be free anyway.
Anyway, hope you enjoy it. I love the site and I’m completely addicted.
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