Last.fm today announced that they will be charging users from outside the US, UK and Germany 3 € per month if they want to keep using the last.fm radio. From their blog:

There will be a 30 track free trial, and we hope this will convince people to subscribe and keep listening to the radio. Everything else on Last.fm (scrobbling, recommendations, charts, biographies, events, videos etc.) will remain free in all countries, like it is now.

Now, I don’t believe that everything on the Interwebs should be for free. I’ve actually been a last.fm subscriber for quite a while, and I didn’t mind then that the service they provided for me was in fact inferior to what they provided in the above mentioned three countries.

But now, I feel a bit screwed over. I’m angry, but not at last.fm (well, there is a bit of rage there, but that’s purely emotional, not rational). I’m sure that the people who are put on the frontline, the ones that have to put up with the anger now unloading on them via their blog’s comments, are not the ones making decisions like these. They just want a great product and they want everyone to enjoy what they built.

Which used to be a viable idea on the Internet. You know, when it was still possible for everyone all over the world to enjoy what someone from a totally different place had decided to put online. Nowadays? Not so much. With all that bullshit about licensing deals, great services like last.fm, Pandora or even Youtube are going down the fucking drain because some suits think they need to squeeze every possible penny out of the rights they acquired in a world long gone and unfit for today’s technical advances.

It’s a shit world.

The two biggest players in the social music world, Last.FM and Pandora, have been fighting for the love of music lovers worldwide for about two years. While both approaches to the same issue, listening to music online based on the music you already like, were always implemented differently (Pandora via the Music Genome Project, Last.FM via user’s recommendations and data pooling), the basic concept was the same: help people discover new music online and give them the ability to listen to it online.

In my eyes, Last.FM had always been the better service, not least due to their extensive efforts in embracing the whole of the music lover’s world in one big social network (”neighbours” based on taste in music, recommendations – both automatic and manual, discussion groups, event calendar, etc.). Pandora on the other hand really did do a good job when it came to quickly creating so-called “stations” with music you liked, mainly because there was no need to upload information about the music you listen to on your computer beforehand.

Well, the rivalry has now come to an end. Why? Because Pandora is forced to shut out everyone of the listeners who don’t reside in the US. While this was actually part of their TOS when they started, it was enforced only by having to sign up with a valid US ZIP code. But today they announced that due to license complications with all the countries other than the US, filtering out users from outside the US based on their IP will be enforced. They sent out emails to users about the crackdown today (TechCrunch article here), and I actually do believe their sentiment that they are indeed very sorry. Not only because they will deprive their users of the joy that is their excellent implementation of the Music Genome Project, but also because they have just been hit by one of the tentacles of old economy lashing out at their younger and hipper offspring, the new one (you know, economy), effectively destroying their service.

Last.FM, which seems to somehow be able to provide their service without getting entangled in all the license restrictions (or maybe they just don’t care yet), will be the victor emerging from this dirty, dirty episode besmearing the history of the global revolution the social web was actually set out to be (and I need some surgery to remove that sick part of my brain that comes up with these analogies).

It’s time for some more reviews. Focus: music related services (the more acute among you may have gathered that from my rather ingenious headline).

Media Master

Let’s jump right in and look at the first one: MediaMaster. While the name may be on the boring side, the service itself is rather interesting. What is it? It’s an online music player! So last year? Well, here’s the twist: you can upload your own music collection, and as far as I have seen, you can upload as much as you want! And then, whenever you are using a computer with a nice enough broadband connection, you can let them stream the music back to you. They also offer a widget, so you can proudly display your music on your blog.

Uploading is easy, especially since they use Java to do so, making the whole venture cross-platform, which is of course music in the ears of a Linux advocate like me (yes, pun intended).

The player looks and is basic, but that’s alright when all you want to do is have some player play your music, don’t you think?

For the more visually inclined among you, a screenshot (click for the full-sized one):

MyStrands

Service number two is MyStrands, which is similar to Last.FM, as it uploads information about the music you listen to, and then weaves connections between your collection and other users’ collections. Desired outcome: good recommendations of new music and a bunch of like-minded friends.

Yesterday they issued a plugin for Amarok, my favourite music player in KDE, which does exactly what needs to be done to use the service: send information about my listening habits to my profile. That’s a great move, because hey, they now have me as a user.

Right now I can’t say too much about their ability to actually provide good recommendations or that wonderful new friend who listens to the exact same things I do. They do have a nice design, even though it seems a bit more cluttered and ad-filled than Last.FM’s. Maybe they should consider expanding the design to make use of the screen real estate most people have nowadays. Having a service provide that many features on a fixed-size design is really not too practical.

Finally, a screenshot: