Downloadable Music Sites

Last.fm is a UK-based Internet radio and music community website, founded in 2002. It claims over 30 million active users based in more than 200 countries. On 30 May 2007, CBS Interactive acquired Last.fm for £140m ($280m USD).

Using a music recommender system called "Audioscrobbler", Last.fm builds a detailed profile of each user's musical taste by recording details of all the songs the user listens to, either on the streamed radio stations, or the user's computer or many portable music devices. This information is transferred to Last.fm's database ("scrobbled") via a plugin installed into the user's music player. The profile data is then displayed on the user's profile page. The site offers numerous social networking features and can recommend and play artists similar to the user's favourites.

Users can create custom radio stations and playlists from any of the audio tracks in Last.fm's music library, and are able to listen to some individual tracks on demand, or download tracks if the rights holder has previously authorised it.

For users living outside the UK, US and Germany, the radio service will require a subscription for €3.00 per month after a 30 track free trial.

History

The current Last.fm website was developed from two separate sources: Audioscrobbler and Last.fm , which were merged in 2005.

Audioscrobbler began as a computer science project by Richard Jones while he attended the University of Southampton School of Electronics and Computer Science in the United Kingdom. Jones developed the first plugins, and then opened an API to the community, after which many music players on different operating system platforms were supported. Audioscrobbler was limited to recording music its users played on a registered computer, which allowed for charting and collaborative filtering.

Last.fm was founded in 2002 by Felix Miller, Martin Stiksel, Saulyus Chyamolonskas (Lithuanian: Saulius Čiamolonskas), Michael Breidenbruecker and Thomas Willomitzer, as an internet radio station and music community site, using similar music profiles to generate dynamic playlists. The site name takes advantage of a domain hack using the top level domain of Micronesia, popular with FM radio related sites. The "love" and "ban" buttons allowed users to gradually customise their profiles. Last.fm won the Europrix 2002 and was nominated for the Prix Ars Electronica in 2003.

The Audioscrobbler and Last.fm teams began to work closely together, both teams moving into the same offices in Whitechapel, London, and by 2003 Last.fm was fully integrated with Audioscrobbler profiles. Input could come through an Audioscrobbler plugin or a Last.fm station. The sites also shared many community forums, although a few were unique to each site.

The old Audioscrobbler site at the audioscrobbler.com domain name was wholly merged into the new Last.fm site on 9 August 2005. This launched audioscrobbler.net as a separate development-oriented site on 5 September 2005. However, at the very bottom of each of the Last.fm pages there was an Audioscrobbler "slogan", which changes each time the page is refreshed. Based on well known sayings or advertisements, these originally appeared at the top of the old Audioscrobbler website pages and were all created and contributed by the original site members.

An update to the site was made on 14 July 2006 which included a new software application for playing Last.fm radio streams and for logging of tracks played with other media players. Other changes included the improvement of the friends system and updating it to require a two-way friendship, the addition of the Last.fm "Dashboard" where users can see on one page relevant information for their profile, expanded options for purchasing music from online retailers and a new visual design for the web site (including an optional black colour scheme).

The site began expanding its language base on 15 July 2006, when a Japanese version of the site was launched. Currently, the site is available in various other languages, including German, Spanish, French, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Swedish, Russian, Turkish and Simplified Chinese.

In late 2006, the site won Best Community Music Site at the BT Digital Music Awards in October. Last.fm also teamed with EMI on Tuneglue-Audiomap. Furthermore, in January 2007 it was nominated for Best Website at the NME Awards.

At the end of April 2007, rumours of negotiations between Viacom and Last.fm emerged, suggesting that Viacom intended to purchase Last.fm for about £225 million. ($449 million USD)

In May 2007 it was announced that Channel 4 Radio was to broadcast a weekly show called Worldwide Chart that reflects what Last.fm users around the world are listening to. There are also plans to add a video section, enabling users to create their own personalised video channels.

On 30 May 2007 it was announced that Last.fm has been bought by CBS for £140 million with Last.fm's current management team staying in place.

In July 2008, the "new generation" Last.fm was launched featuring a completely new layout, colour-scheme and several new features as well as some old ones removed. This was, however, met with dissatisfaction amongst some users, who complained about "ugly and non-user-friendly layout", bugs and slowness.. Still, a month after the redesign a CBS press release credited the redesign with generating a 20% growth in the site's traffic.

On 11 September 2009, CBS Radio announced that Last.fm programming will be available in 4 major market FM stations for the first time on their HD Radio multicasts. This includes KCBS-HD2 in Los Angeles, CA; KITS-HD3 in San Francisco, CA; WWFS-HD2 in New York City; and WXRT-HD3 in Chicago, IL. The programming, which is mostly comprised of music aggregated by Last.fm's user-generated weekly music charts as well as live performances and interviews from the Last.fm studios in New York City is set to debut on October 5 .

Funding and staff

Last.fm Ltd is funded from the sale of online advertising space, monthly user subscriptions and donations. In 2004 the company received the first round of angel money, from Peter Gardner, an investment banker who was introduced to the founders as early as 2002. A second round was led by Stefan Glaenzer (joined by Joi Ito and Reid Hoffman), who bought into Michael Breidenbrueckers shares as well. In 2006 the company received the first round of venture capital funding from European investors Index Ventures, whose General Partners Neil Rimer and Danny Rimer also joined Last.fm's board of directors, consisting of Felix Miller, Martin Stiksel and Stefan Glaenzer (Chair). On Tuesday, 24 March 2009 it was announced on the official Last.fm blog that Last.fm will charge users — except for those in the United States, United Kingdom, or Germany — a subscription fee of €3.00 per month for use of Last.fm radio. Since April 27 this subscription has become active.

Features

User accounts

The free user account includes access to all the main features listed below. Registered Users are also able to post in the Last.fm forums, send and receive private messages and use the Last.fm client music player. For users living outside the UK, US and Germany, the radio service will require a subscription for €3.00 per month after a 30 track free trial.

• Profile : A Last.fm User can build up a musical profile using any or all of several methods: by listening to their personal music collection on a music player application on a computer or an iPod with an Audioscrobbler plugin, or by listening to the Last.fm internet radio service, either with the Last.fm client, or with the embedded flash player. All songs played are added to a log from which personal top artist/track bar charts and musical recommendations are calculated. They call this automatic track logging scrobbling .

• Recommendations : The most recent expanded service on Last.fm is a revamped personal recommendations page known as "The Dashboard". This is only visible to the user concerned and lists suggested new music, events, journal entries and other people with similar tastes, all tailored to the user's own preferences.

• Groups : Last.fm allows the formation of user groups between users with something in common (for example, fans of an artist, a genre of music, or membership of another internet forum). Groups may be linked to artists and countries. Any user may start a group and add members. Most groups are open to all, but membership may be subject to approval by the Group Leader. Last.fm will generate a group profile similar to the users' profiles, showing an amalgamated set of data and charting the group's overall tastes. Individual groups have their own discussion forums and journal space, and a group radio station based on members' music profiles is automatically generated once a sufficient number of members have joined. Group members are also able to submit recommendations of artists or tracks to all the other members of their group.

• Events : With the October 2006 update, 'events'-functionality was added, which lets users specify a location and a radius from the location, then suggests gigs or festivals that that user may want to see in the area. Users can set themselves as attending an event.

Subscriber accounts

Last.fm offers paid accounts, costing £3, €3 or $3 per month. Some of the extra features that paid users receive are:

• No advertising

Free Music Download Sites | Free MP3 Music Downloads | Free Music ...

Free Music Download Sites shows you where and how to get 100% legitimate free music downloads. Learn how to download over 50 MP3s for free today.

...

Download Free Movies - Top 3 Movies Sites Music Games

Top 3 Download Free Movies Sites revealed. Movies, Music, Games, Software, Ipod and PSP downloads. These sites include DVD burning software FREE.

...

Unlimited Music, MP3s, PSP, Games and Movies Download - Music Download ...

TOP GAME, MOVIE & MUSIC DOWNLOAD SITES . Welcome to EzyDownload.net!. If you are looking for the quality websites that provide unlimited downloads and review of favourite pop songs ...

...

Free Music Downloads - Download Music

"Download Music on the Top Legal Sites and Free Music Downloads Sites Today!" Here you'll find impartial music site reviews on the BEST, the LARGEST, the FASTEST, and the CHEAPEST ...

...

Movie Download Sites | 80 Million Movies Here

Movie Download sites + Software + Games + Music. Top 5 sites are here. Look no more. Get instant access. 80 million + titles. Get movies and games here.

...

Best Music Download Sites : Unlimited Songs Downloading : Online ...

Music download sites are reviewed regularly to provide you with updated ratings and reviews making your search for a legal music download service effortless. Our services include ...

...

Arabic Music MP3 Sites - Download Arab Songs in Real Audio and Real ...

Listen live to Arabic Music in MP3 quality or download arabic songs sharki, rai, maghreb music in real audio, midi, mp3, real video

...

Free Legal Music Download Sites. Free Legal Music Downloads.

Free legal music download sites can be found here. We have tried to find you the best free music download sites, free mp3 music download sites and free music ringtone download ...

...

Music Download Sites Reviews - Download Music, MP3 on Legal Sites and ...

Music Download Sites Reviews - Download Music, MP3 on Legal Sites and Free Music MP3 Downloads Sites Today

...

Mp3 Download Site, Mp3 Music Downloads – Mp3Shake.com – Best Mp3 ...

Welcome to Mp3Shake - one of the biggest mp3 download music sites on the internet! Here you can find the most popular mp3 albums and mp3 songs of your favourite artists.

...