All Major Labels to Stream Free Music on Last.fm (Wired.com)

Link: All Major Labels to Stream Free Music on Last.fm | Listening Post from Wired.com.

This is HUGE news, for many reasons (incl. the implications for my own startup, Sonific). For one thing, I would like to know how much they (CBS) paid the major record labels for this but my guess is that it's very very serious cash and other fav-nations marketing guarantees. You'd have to be CBS to get a deal like this done - scale is what matters, here - and that scale they got by using without asking (but yes, cleverly so!).

  As much as I love Last.fm, once again, it's clear: if you want to succeed in next-gen music ventures, do this:

a) just use the labels' music in any way that you see fit (provided that is in some sort of way legally defensible, at least in some instances, sometimes, somewhere)

b) build your audience based on that attractive 'free music' availability (remember... that's the idea behind radio!) and make the best of any and all those gray-zone licenses.

c) get a huge company to either buy or back you, and

d) THEN do a deal to get the rights to use the music in the way that you wanted to, to begin with.

Did I get this right?

"Last.fm, the social media site acquired by CBS last May, now lets users play any song from the Big Four record labels and thousands of indie labels and artists up to three times, for free. At a press conference at CBS' headquarters Wednesday, executives revealed plans for Last.fm to become "the first website to offer free, global, on-demand access to the largest licensed catalog of music." CBS president and CEO Leslie Moonves kicked off what he called a "groundbreaking" announcement by saying that the company had wondered, "Could this culture meld with our culture?  And I'm pleased to say it did.... Community is clearly the future."

Then Quincy Smith, president of CBS Interactive, took the podium to announce an overview of the plan to distribute music from the Big Four major labels -- Sony BMG, Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group and EMI Music -- plus Ioda, Naxos, The Orchard and about 150,000 indie labels and bands, all for free. Each label deal is different, according to Smith. The total number of songs available now is 3.5 million, but the company is aggressively adding content, and Stiksel said it will never stop adding music.  "The mission is to have every track available," said Last.fm co-founder Martin Stiksel...."

Comments

[Thomas]

To your points a-d:

Yes, you are right. That's the way you will get it running.
Why? Cause the music industry, better the copright holder, are living in the "old good world". They don`t like to stop this "good old times". They don`t want to take any risks. They don`t want to accept that content - their content - in the information age is "nearly" a public good now.
So it seems it's impossible to build a revolutionizing business model with a "legal" deal from the beginning. The conditions will be insane.
So... you have to develop in the "grey zone".