Last.fm to introduce charges
The Spotify team must be rubbing their hands together like a bunch of evil geniuses after hearing the news that its key rival Last.fm has announced it will be introducing charges for its music streaming service. Could this mean a surge of new Spotify users? Now that you’ve closed your mouth, I can tell you the decision to make you part with your cash for your music will affect every country outside the UK, US and Germany (yesssss). This means, those unfortunates residing outside these countries will be offered a three day trial before a streaming charge of 3 Euros a month is slapped onto their account. Albeit it’s only 3 Euros, but it’s not quite complimentary is it?
Understandably and inevitably, this shock decision has been met with screams of outrage and objection, with many users threatening to close their accounts and move on to a service that isn’t going to filch money from them.
A Last.fm spokesperson admitted the move was “a business decision”, saying “after looking at our resources and opportunities we think it’s the best way to keep improving Last.fm radio”. Defending its move to charge territory, Last.fm released this statement: “While we would like to provide the same service for users of all countries, the world is a huge place and it’s not cheap to deliver music over the Internet.”
If you happen to take up residence in one of the three ‘safe’ countries, this is obviously good news, but all this has served to do is make us feel on edge as if it’s only a matter of time before those corporate charges apply to us too.
[via T3]More tech news here
