Last.fm announces free music service

Last.fm has announced that it will join the likes of Spiral Frog in the fight to keep failing sales in the music industry alive.

Last.fm has just launched a free streaming service which allows users to stream a song for free up to three times before asking them to buy the track.

This isn’t all together unusual, however, what is different is that Last.fm intend to pay royalties to the artists each time one of their songs in streamed rather than just every time it’s downloaded.

The site has signed deals with over 150,000 independent record companies as well as the four major labels (EMI, Sony BMG, Universal and Warner). The site also offers new, unsigned artists a chance to earn money from the music they make and upload to Last.fm.

Last.fm will fund the venture with revenue obtained from the site’s advertising. Several sites, like Spiral Frog, offer users a chance to download songs for free, as long as they’re willing to tolerate the advertisement played at the start of each track. Last.fm has taken a different approach to the whole "funding through advertising" business. The service is simply paid for by the sites banner and ad revenue.

The service is up and running in the UK, Germany and U.S. with plans to go global in the near future. Hurray.