Tag Music

Bye bye Last.fm

It's not that they are asking for money to keep themselves going. No, they are --- and have been for a time --- owned by CBS. It's not even that they put it like this on their blog ("promise that we’ll be hard at work improving the service for years to come."), but it's mostly that they are so keen to discriminate, they've been doing it for a while (see geographically-limited iPhone app, geographically-limited free radio service etc.) and now they will make their service unattainable for so many worldwide. Pandora was the better of the two services. Last.fm was the more 'decent' one (socially) and apparently the savviest one from a business point of view as it managed to keep the service available worldwide for longer. The change to Last.fm radio will probably mean the end of the service for many users outside of the three countries that will keep enjoying it for free. For me, I guess my subscription will not be renewed.

An ISP is not a court.

The saga continues, with the music industry attempting to subvert the law in Europe and turn ISPs into policy enforcers and courts of law all at once. With ever higher profits in 2008, and a pretty grim record of accusing and prosecuting the elderly, single mothers with no computers etc. in the States, it seems like the music industry would rather hand the dirty job over to ISPs. This is, besides illegal, pretty prone to error --- as history has shown. I'm really looking forward to the next settlement Eircom will reach, this time with wrongly-accused (and disconnected) individuals. Hopefully it'll be more than enough to compensate for their stupidity.