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Last.fm Seals Deal With All Four Major Labels, Amazon Reaps the Benefits

By 
January 24, 2008 10:30 AM ET

The arms race between the Amazon and iTunes digital music stores is heating up, thanks to an agreement made yesterday between the CBS-owned Last.fm and all four major record companies. As part of the deal, Last.fm will give users access to any song they like and stream it for free thanks to ad revenue that will come from page views and demographically-specific videos. Listeners are permitted three free streams per song, after which they are given the option of purchasing an mp3 of the song from the Amazon music store. The deal is a major coup for Amazon, as Last.fm's twenty million users will be directed to iTunes' biggest competitor as opposed to the Apple giant. While the Last.fm music catalogue has ballooned to 3.5 million songs, according to co-founder Martin Stiksel, "The mission is to have every track available." Last.fm is also reaching out to independent artists by adding an ad revenue plan that pays the artist a royalty for every stream they get.

Related Stories:
• Alternate Takes: Test-Driving Amazon's Music Megastore
• iTunes Plus Subtracting Price, Adding Indies
• iTunes Now Bigger Record Store Than Target, Amazon, Sam Goody

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“Let My Love Open the Door”

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A peppy, hopeful love song, "Let My Love Open the Door" became a U. S. Top Ten hit for Pete Townshend in 1980, anchored by the kind of repeating synthesizer figures that he'd used in some of the Who's recordings in the previous decade. Although Townshend brushed the song off as "just a ditty" in Rolling Stone shortly after its release, in 1996 he revealed it was about love of the holiest sort. "It's supposed to be about the power of God's love," he remarked. "That when you're in difficulty, whether it's major or minor, God's love is always there for you."

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