Yesterday, I was astounded to learn that Last.fm was going to charge people €3.00 per month to listen to streaming radio except those living in the US, the UK and Germany. And I thought that was Technological Racism from Last.fm.
Some people argued that streaming radio is expensive and it this should be a paid service. Of course! In fact, most sane people don’t have any problems paying some money provided everyone does it. As someone said, it would have been so much better to charge everyone €1.00 instead of selecting people based on place of birth. How the PR people of Last.fm came up with such a controversial idea and thought it was a good idea defies logic.
On the Last.fm blog, I proposed the following:
If I were you, I would have introduced some kind of quota for the radio. Say a few hours per day free, the rest (if any) being paid.
This would allow people like me (who have been contributing to the Last.fm database for years now) not to feel completely abandoned. Don’t forget that last.fm is what it is because of us.
One hour ago, I starting receiving Twitter messages from friends telling me to have a look at an article on the BBC News website, Last.fm to charge for streaming, and that I would be surprised. I went there and, lo and behold, my proposition was there in the article. And as a bonus, I was presented as a blogger (blog poster?) and a Last.fm-contributing musician from Mauritius!
I’m sure Andy Warhol is smiling somewhere. I am having my 15 minutes of fame!
Will Last.fm come to its sense? I would be extatic as I love music!
Popularity: 1% [?]
March 25th, 2009 at 22:39
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7963812.stm
“Avinash Meetoo, a blog poster and Last.fm-contributing musician from Mauritius, suggested that the site should have introduced a quota – free for a certain number of hours per day, and charged thereafter.
“This would allow people like me (who have been contributing to the Last.fm database for years now) not to feel completely abandoned. Don’t forget that last.fm is what it is because of us,” he said. ”
On BBC!! that’s indeed your 15mins of dame
March 26th, 2009 at 00:10
LOL I was going crazy telling everyone to retweet that news. Congrats!! ;D
March 26th, 2009 at 00:45
Eh. Emmerdeur. It’s my 15 minutes of fame
March 26th, 2009 at 10:36
That’s great Avinash! Congrats.
I hope this 15 minutes of fame is an ‘avant-gout’ of your years or decades of fame to come
March 26th, 2009 at 10:59
Thanks Sudha! Let’s hope you’re right
March 26th, 2009 at 14:03
March 27th, 2009 at 11:42
Hey congrats
Your name is engraved on BBC site 
March 28th, 2009 at 16:16
Don’t forget that last.fmnoulakaz.net is what it is because of us… ;p
congrats!!!
March 29th, 2009 at 02:18
you really can’t keep yourself off the lights can you? LOL
hahahah congrats!
hahahahaha [me remembering the time in class you mentioned that in his life everyone deserves his 15 minutes of fame]
:p I guess you can wear a “fame magnet” tshirt .. [imitating those "chick magnet" tshirts] hahahahaha.
Hmm seems lately you are having a lot of reasons to offer some beer :p. Don’t let it accumulate too much :p it will reach crates per person otherwise! hahahahahaha
March 29th, 2009 at 02:20
lol in a way it looks like the rest of the world vs UK, US and Germany .. you being the representative of “rest of the world”! hahahahahaha that would mean a lot of countries :p.
March 29th, 2009 at 18:01
What Last.fm is doing is not very intelligent.
The people there could have EXPLAINED that because the economy is bad, they have to make the radio paying FOR EVERYONE. No one on Earth would have complained. Now that they have indulged in “technological racism”, they have a lot of explaining to do.
I won’t be surprised that they change their strategy on the 31st. They know that they need people from outside those 3 countries if they want to have a complete database.
March 29th, 2009 at 18:16
indeed, but i believe that if they start to get people pissed off, specially after THE community of users who helped em becoming popular gets treated like that, they’ll be most probably be under various sorts of attacks, starting from “last.fm” sucks stuffs to crackers attacks around..