last.fm rewinds

I really like last.fm; like many others I was a little sceptical about giving £3 a month so I could listen to music, but I was pleasantly surprised by the recommendations and a-radio-station-per-artist on-demand playlists and, of course, your own playlist based on tracks you have "loved". So my horror began today when I was greeted with an error message which pointed at a grovelling explanation on this page. 

Starting November 17th, 2010, Last.fm is discontinuing a few subscriber-only radio stations.

...

Licensing music is a complex and labour intensive process.  By discontinuing a few stations, we're able to focus our energy on improving our most popular features, developing new and innovative stations, and offering the best music discovery service to our global audience.

and

The following subscriber-only radio stations will no longer be available:

Loved Tracks Radio: streaming your list of loved tracks

Playlists: streaming a list of tracks you've chosen for a playlist

Personal Tag Radio: streaming a list of artists, albums or tracks that you have tagged

Yes you got it, last.fm no longer allows users to listen to the tracks they've chosen in effect forcing user's to listen to recommendation playlists. Granted the recommendation playlists are good, but everyone is going to want to listen to "just their music" once in a while. Here's what won't change:

Access to your list of loved tracks

Access to your playlists and the list of tracks within them

Access to your personal tags and the list of tracks within each

Your ability to listen to global tag stations

So basically you can access the names of the tracks you like but you can't play them and only them on-demand. Already, last.fm orders the sequence in which specific tracks in the playlist are up next, but now we can't listen to a specific music, instead music will HAVE to be played from a "recommended" playlist entirely derived by some formula at last.fm HQ. This "formula" (for want of a better word) is now very likely to have a very heavily weighted function on the music tracks legal licencing, I don't know about you but I couldn't give a damn about the licencing if I'm listening to "recommended" tracks. The last.fm "forced-sequencing" was tolerable given that this is a service last.fm have to make money out of, but with the onset of the "forced-playlists" (recommended playlists or artists radios) I don't think the £3 a month fee is justified.

The reason they cite is due to the complexity of music licencing. Yes, that's right, apparently it is more complicated to provide on-demand music from a variety of artists (from recommendations) than it is to play *one* specific track on demand. That doesn't smell right to me. Is this because "the recommendations" will be easier to licence on-demand? Implying that last.fm will group tracks for recommendations by the legal mumbojumbo in the track's licencing agreement. Surely this is the last thing on a user's mind when subscribing to a "recommendation". Go figure.


I've not yet decided whether I'll leave last.fm because of this, but I'm seriously considering it.