Last.fm has postponed a paid subscription

“After the announcement of our decision to introduce a paid subscription in all countries except the USA, Great Britain and Germany, we received a lot of feedback,” - this is how the message begins on the official Last.fm blog, in which the project’s founders say they decided to reconsider make your decision and postpone the subscription for an indefinite time, until you develop a few additional features (gift certificates, support for alternative payment systems, payment by SMS, integration of the subscription into the Last.fm API ).

Obviously, they saw that the introduction of a paid subscription will now become a real disaster from the point of view of public relations, because it was extremely negatively perceived by the majority of the audience. Judging by the comments on Habrahabr , the absolute majority of users are not going to pay 3 euros per month, and immediately begin to search for alternative Internet radio stations, the benefit of a lack of them is not observed. True, no one can be compared to the size of the music library with Last.fm, but for most listeners this is not fundamental.

The founders of Last.fm also explain the causes of geographical discrimination. The fact is that they simply cannot sell a sufficient amount of advertising to a foreign audience, so in these countries the project cannot pay for itself with advertising, as in the USA, Great Britain and Germany.