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.