Prompt's TechBlog

Very mixed feelings here about US broadcasting giant CBS's GBP140m acquisition of London-based music community site last.fm.

On the one hand, I've loved last.fm since joining it in 2005. Unlike other social-networking sites, it's always put the user first, keeping advertising to an understated minimum and providing its community of music fans with useful tools and features that always seem to work effortlessly.

It's also the best-looking social networking site I've seen - its stylish modernist interface a refreshing contrast to the garish clutter of MySpace. In the last year it's gone from strength to strength, striking deals with EMI and Warner Music to enable it to stream songs online, introducing an 'events' function that lets users socialise around gigs, and providing 'widgets' that allow users to customise their blogs to show what music they're listening to right now.

For many people, it's also a useful recommendation engine, analysing the music that they listen to, cross-referencing it against other users with similar tastes, and providing recommendations accordingly.

And therein, for me, lies the problem. Last.fm has been outrageously good at gathering personal data from its 15 million users. In the last 18 months, the details of every single song I've listened to on iTunes have been uploaded to last.fm, thanks to the Audioscrobbler plug-in that I willingly installed on my laptop. I've provided an incredible amount of data about my listening habits, my musical tastes, gigs I've attended, who my friends are, and where else on the internet I can be found.

I was happy to give that data to last.fm, because I found the site useful and fun, and I liked the fact that it was independent and put users first. I wasn't so happy to read that new owner CBS considers these same users simply as 'earlobes' (the audio equivalent of a web marketer's 'eyeballs') for its ad-driven radio channels.

As far as I'm concerned, last.fm has just sold me to CBS's marketing department, for a mere nine pounds*. From a business perspective, I'm impressed. But as a last.fm user, I feel, well, just a bit used.

I deleted my account. Sorry, CBS.


* Hat tip to Andrew Smith for working out the maths.


Tags: last.fm | cbs

Labels: web 2.0