Geomium has announced a tie-in with CBS-owned Last.fm that sees the latter’s 1.5 million music event listings get added to the discovery features of Geomium’s location-based social network.
Under the commercial arrangement, local gigs and festivals pulled in from Last.fm will show up on Geomium’s GPS-powered iPhone app, along with existing listings such as bars, restaurants and local offers. Should attending one of those Last.fm-listed events require purchasing a ticket, users are, of course, sent Last.fm’s way where the music recommendation service gets a kick back. Geomium users can also share their intent, thus increasing the likelihood that others in their local social graph will also make a booking. → Read More
Navigating the choppy waters of ad-supported music, We7 hasn’t been afraid to change course. The UK startup began life as an innovative free music download service before transitioning to an on-demand browser-based offering. While most recently the company, which is backed by Peter Gabriel, Eden Venture and Spark Ventures, made a premium paid-for play with a desktop and mobile version sans-advertising.
Today, We7 is shifting focus once again in the belief that the route to mass market requires a lean-back experience more akin to Internet radio services like Pandora in the U.S. rather than a pure on-demand play such as European competitor Spotify. It’s also a model that sits more comfortably with We7′s ad-supported aspirations since music licensing fees for Internet radio are about a third of that charged for non subscription on-demand services. → Read More
Is it possible to make online ads “sticky” so that users engage with them longer? That’s the aim of a new partnership between CBS-owned Last.fm and MXP4, the interactive music startup.
Using MXP4′s technology, Last.fm is to begin offering brands the option to create ads that users of the music streaming and discovery service can interact with, such as remixing a track in realtime or “singing along in karaoke mode”, all within the ad itself. In a way it’s similar in concept to Apple’s new iAds in the sense that ads become fully blown apps. And obviously, a music oriented app is a perfect fit for Last.fm. → Read More
[UK] 7digital has updated their BlackBerry app to include integration with Last.fm.
Users of the MP3 download store and media player can now link their Last.fm account to the app, enabling them to ‘scrobble’ tracks played on their mobile phone and send listening data to the Last.fm website in real-time.
As a result, the ‘Now Playing’ status on a user’s Last.fm profile is constantly updated and the music streaming service’s music recommendations will, of course, also improve. → Read More
One perceived weakness of Spotify is its music recommendation features. Let’s just say it’s no Last.fm, appearing to make very little use of users’ listening data to help other users discover new music. That’s about to change, to some degree at least, as the European music streaming service rolls out an improved artist discovery feature. → Read More
Last.fm, the CBS-owned London-based social music platform, has partnered with Europe’s biggest-selling daily newspaper Bild to power its radio service on the paper’s website. The move is part fo Last.FM’s bid to consolidate its position as an online radio partner for Europe’s news websites. The Bild integration follows a partnership with Germany’s popular weekly magazine Der Spiegel and an “evolving” relationship with the BBC which has seen the broadcasting service integrate Last.fm web services into its digital radio and online properties. CrunchBase Information Last.fm Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
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