30 May 2007
Last.fm - Acquisition by CBS - Good or Bad?
Posted by Dexter M under: music; web 2.0; news .
I’ve been a big fan, and sporadic user of Last.Fm for some time now. Their talk at FOWA 2007 was inspirational, and they are genuinely nice guys too!
When I found out today from Vicky about the news their buy-out by CBS by first reaction was something like : NOOOOOOOOOO!
I’ve thought about it a bit more, and, in a way, this kind of thing is innevitable - a genuinely good idea well executed, with a big popular following of people who love music is ripe for the picking by a media giant like CBS . There’s every chance this could work out - in the short term the big guys are unlikely to try to meddle too much. Time will tell as to what the long-term effects will be.
One things for certainly, people making and listening to music will always find a way to go “underground” when they need to escape the mainstream - it’s happened before, it’s kind of happening now, and and it will happen again.
Last.fm have almost done their job - it may be time to move on at some point - after all where is Napster in the scheme of things now?