March 24, 2009

By By Antony Bruno, Denver

Last.fm is moving away from its free, ad-supported streaming music model in some parts of the world in favor of a monthly subscription fee. In all countries save the U.S., U.K., and Germany, it will now charge a 3-euro monthly fee for the Last.fm radio service. It will offer a 30-song free trial to rope users in before the fee goes into effect.

Other parts of the Last.fm service other than the radio feature?such as scrobbling, recommendations, videos and so on?will remain free to users as they always have been. The company did not say why it made the move, or why some countries are exempt from the switch, however the likely cause is that the company is not getting enough traffic in those areas to generate the ad sales needed to cover its licensing fees.

It's not an entirely new model. Last.fm has long offered a subscription option to radio users who wanted to skip the ads. The new move simply removes that option and makes the monthly fee mandatory.

Subscribe to Billboard magazine today!