p2pnet - rss feed: CBS gulps Last.fm for $280M
p2pnet.net news:- “Today, Last.fm was acquired by CBS,” blogs the online radio station’s Richard Jones (right). It’s one of the world’s largest social music platforms with 20 million active users based in more than 232 countries.
CBS is paying $280 million in cash.
“Last.fm currently has more than 15 million active users in more than 200 countries,” says CBS.
The buy follows a number of CBS Interactive announcements including the purchase of Wallstrip.com, investments in Joost and Spot Runner and the recent expansion of the CBS Audience Network, “to include a total of 25 online partners”.
Last.fm founders Felix Miller, Martin Stiksel and Jones will continue to independently run the online network, says a statement, going on, “The Last.fm management team will work with all relevant CBS divisions to apply their community-building and technology expertise to extend CBS businesses online and within the mobile space.”
Founded in 2002, Last.fm uses “scrobbling” and its social recommendation engine to profile users’ musical tastes, “and leverages each user’s song list to make highly personalized recommendations, connect users who share similar tastes, provide custom radio streams and other music related community features”.
Audioscrobbler began as a computer science project by Jones while he was studying at the University of Southampton in the UK, says Wikipedia, continuing:
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, Michael Breidenbruecker and Thomas Willomitzer, all from Austria and Germany, as an internet radio station and music community site, using similar music profiles to generate dynamic playlists. The ‘love’ and ‘ban’ buttons allowed users to gradually customize their profiles. Last.fm won the Europrix 2002 and was nominated for the Prix Ars Electronica in 2003.[1]
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.
On August 9, 2005, the old Audioscrobbler site at the audioscrobbler.com domain name was wholly merged into the new Last.fm site. On September 5, 2005, audioscrobbler.net was launched as a separate development-oriented site.
Last.fm also features an “Events” list that can recommending global festival and music events.
The largest concentration of listeners is in United States, Britain, Germany, Poland, Brazil, and Japan. Last.fm’s large and growing user base is predominately young, engaged and very involved on the site.
Also See:
CBS - CBS Corporation Acquires Last.fm, a Community-Based, Music Discovery Network with a Global Reach, May 30, 2007
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