Last.fm will no longer be free for users. The company is also scaling back in the number of available countries that the service can be accessed in according to SlashGear. Last.fm will stay up in the United States, Canada, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, Brazil, the United Kingdom, and Germany.
Last.fm was hit with a security breach three months ago despite the company acknowledging it less than a month ago. Last.fm was the third major website to be hit with a security breach after LinkedIn and eHarmony in the last month. Last.fm asked users to change their passwords after a dump of about 1.5 million passwords appeared on a cryptography forum.
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If you have a Last.fm account, I would advise you to change your password. Last.fm has issued a statement regarding whether hackers have gained access to their user database and leaked some passwords. Last.fm is recommending that users log in to their accounts and change their passwords.
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Today is a big day for Klout. The social influence calculator just added five new networks to its algorithms, bringing their measurement possibilities to 10 total networks. Adding Tumblr, Blogger, Flickr, Last.fm and Instagram to the already-included Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare and YouTube means that some Klout users are about to see a huge jump in their scores. The staff blog reminds users that “connecting an account will never lower your Score, but it may increase it as we can give you credit for your influence in that network.” TechCrunch notes that Google+ is still missing from the list but that it should be on its way soon.
Last.fm has announced on their blog that the radio feature on mobile apps and home entertainment devices will be going ad free and subscriber-only. Last.fm Radio will remain free on their website in the U.S., U.K., and Germany. Last.fm Radio will also remain free on Xbox Live and Windows Mobile 7 phones in the U.S., U.K., and Germany.
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Every day millions of people are tweeting, digging, voting up on reddit, IMing, texting, and uploading video content. Keeping track of everything on the Internet can be overwhelming. Visualizing some of this data can make things easier on our eyes. There are lots of tools out there that can help visualize and make sense of all of the user generated data. The purpose of this blog post is to raise the awareness of the tools available as of today. I have broken down the tools by the associated websites in alphabetical order here.
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The three founders of Last.fm Richard Jones, Martin Stiksel, and Felix Miller will most likely be leaving CBS by the end of the year. About two years ago, Last.fm was sold to CBS for $280 million. The three founders will be leaving to start another project.
“This is the latest stage in a long journey for us founders, which began in a living room in east London in 2002, and took us to the headquarters of one of the biggest media companies in the world,” stated the founders of Last.fm.
The founders are not planning on any reasons revolving around the acquisition, but more because the website is in great shape. They even said the company may even do better without the “crazy founder dudes hanging around.”
[via Guardian]
The three co-founders will be stepping down by the end of the month, but will serve as advisors for three months. The three co-founders will also help pick another head for Last.fm. Last.fm has about 37.7 million users.
In the past, TechCrunch had heard rumors accusing either CBS or the Last.fm founders of sending user data to the RIAA. Both CBS and Last.fm had denied those claims.
TechCrunch wrote a post several months ago about whether Last.fm submitted user information to the RIAA. Last.fm denied it. And now a new rumor has came up about how Last.fm’s parent company CBS Corporation sent information to the RIAA by tricking Last.fm. The trick that TechCrunch claimed took place was that CBS told Last.fm that they were planning to use the information for internal uses, but sent it to the RIAA anyway.
The source behind this whole issue is an anonymous individual that spoke directly with Last.fm employees. However Last.fm claims that no one at the company knows anything about a leak of information. “Any request for such data would have to be approved by myself first. The suggestion that CBS’s ops team provided this data is just not possible – Last.fm operates as a separate entity and their operations staff do not have access to our system,” stated Russ Garrett, a developer at Last.fm.
paidContent published a response that CBS has made in relation to the aforementioned controvery:
“Both CBS and the RIAA have already stated quite clearly, for the record, that absolutely no individual user or listener information was supplied to the RIAA by last.fm or any division of CBS Corporation in the past, nor do we plan to do so in the future. The story posted by the website was based on an unnamed tipster. No inquiry was made to CBS or last.fm about the veracity of the anonymous source. Those who consult such blogs should be aware of the standard by which such postings are sourced and published.”
The original source TechCrunch had for the story about Last.fm sending data to the RIAA stated that the employee that leaked the information was fired.
