A couple of months ago Erick Schonfeld wrote a post titled “Did Last.fm Just Hand Over User Listening Data To the RIAA?” based on a source that has proved to be very reliable in the past. All hell broke loose shortly thereafter.
Before posting Erick reached out to the RIAA, Last.fm and parent company CBS for comments. The only response was from CBS – “To our knowledge, no data has been made available to RIAA.” The CBS spokesperson, Katie Gunion, subsequently emailed us to say “would you please attribute the statement to Last.fm, it is currently reading as though CBS issued the statement” Gunion’s email lists her title as Public Relations, CBS Interactive, and her first statement did not name Last.fm (this is important, see below). A subsequent statement by Shannon Jacobs, VP of Communications at CBS: “this is a last.fm issue, as far as I am concerned. It is not a corporate issue. This is a last.fm issue, not a corporate issue. The posting represents last.fm’s response.”
After the story broke all concerned parties had no problem commenting publicly.
Last.fm cofounder Richard Jones said “I’m rather pissed off this article was published, except to say that this is utter nonsense and totally untrue.” He followed up with a blog post “Techcrunch are full of shit, “I denied it vehemently on the Techcrunch article, as did several other Last.fm staffers. We denied it in the Last.fm forums, on twitter, via email – basically we denied it to anyone that would listen, and now we’re denying it on our blog.” One blog called us a “tabloid masquerading as a legitimate news outlet.” Lots of others piled on.
Apart from updating the original post we’ve been quiet on this story. The person who first leaked the news was terminated from CBS for the leak, says our original source, and threatened with legal action. He understandably went very quiet. But the outrageously shrill denials by Last.fm just didn’t ring true. Once you got past the personal attacks, the denial language itself was too carefully worded.
Now we’ve located another source for the story, someone who’s very close to Last.fm. And it turns out Last.fm was telling the truth, sorta, when they said Erick’s story wasn’t correct.
Last.fm didn’t hand user data over to the RIAA. According to our source, it was their parent company, CBS, that did it. That corresponds to what our original source said in conversations we had after our initial post and before CBS lawyers became involved. But we didn’t want to update until we had an independent source for that information, too.
Here’s what we believe happened, based on our sources: CBS requested user data from Last.fm, including user name and IP address. CBS wanted the data to comply with a RIAA request but told Last.fm the data was going to be used for “internal use only.” It was only after the data was sent to CBS that Last.fm discovered the real reason for the request, say our sources. Last.fm staffers were outraged, say our sources, but the data had already been sent to the RIAA.
Here’s an email from the original source, partially redacted. A screenshot of this email is here.
Re: touching base
From: [redacted, a CBS employee]
Sent: [redacted]
To: [redacted][ _____] We provided the data to the RIAA yesterday because we know from experience that they can negatively impact our streaming rates with publishers. Based on the urgency of the request they probably just wanted to learn more about the leak but who knows. Seriously, can you blame them? [______] Our ops team provided the usual reports along with additional log data including user IP addresses. The GM who told them to do it said the data was for internal use only. Well, that was the big mistake. The team in the UK became irate because they had to do it a second time since we were told some of the data was corrupted. This time they transferred the data directly to them and in doing so they discovered who really made the request. Shit really hit the fan, I even got a call [______] Obviously, I can see their POV but what they don’t understand over there is that we are in the analytics business and it’s not like this is the first time we’ve provided this data to a third party. Someone over there should be more forthright with users about the data policy instead of complaining about BD to upper management like I’m here trying to destroy the business. We’re just trying to help them stay afloat here it’s not like Pro memberships are earning any revenue! [______________] So if you hear of anything, I’m even open to possibly moving West now for the right opportunity, let me know.
Our new source, which hasn’t seen this email, says much the same: that Last.fm didn’t know the nature of the CBS request until after the data was sent and that the data was in fact subsequently sent by CBS to the RIAA. This source’s information comes directly from Last.fm employees who he has spoken with.
It’s important to note that while sources are in agreement that it was the RIAA that made the request, it may have been one or more music labels acting independently. The suggestion in the email above that the compliance was made because of the ability for the requester to negatively impact streaming rates suggests it was a label request. But the end result is the same. So if CBS/Last.fm deny sending data to the RIAA but don’t say anything about the labels, they’re being shifty again. Also, there are whispers that someone may have put a stop to the data transfer before it left CBS – that gives them a denial out if they paint with broad strokes. Much better would be if they simply, honestly, told us what really happened and we could move on.
We believe, based on information supplied by our sources, that CBS lied to us when they denied sending, or at least intending to send, the data to the RIAA, and that they subsequently asked us to attribute the quote to Last.fm to make the statement defensible. Last.fm’s denials were strictly speaking correct, but they ignored the underlying truth of the situation say our sources,, that their parent company supplied user data to the RIAA, and that the data could possibly be used in civil and criminal actions against those users. We believe that the outrage they aimed at us for reporting the story, which we believe was materially correct, should have been aimed at CBS instead. But Last.fm never spoke publicly of the real facts of the story.
We believe Last.fm and CBS may have violated their own privacy policy in the transmission of this data. We also believe CBS and Last.fm may have violated EU privacy laws, including the Data Protection Directive, and should be investigated by the appropriate authorities.
And to the CBS employee who was, according to our original source, fired and threatened based on this story – we believe certain U.S. Whistle Blower laws may protect you from retaliation from CBS in this matter. We’d like to provide you with legal counsel at our cost.
Update: Last.fm denial.
Will someone please sue the RIAA out of existence and end the entire record company monopoly once and for all?
Pretty please?
Great follow up by the way.
Apparently someone is going to sue them:
http://arstechn...aring-cases.ars
Looks like its time to switch to the newcomer http://www.jamwee.com
I’ve been waiting for the June 15th Beta launch anyway. Just deleted my Last.fm account.
Nice. I just signed up. Are there any demo videos out there yet?
seconded. I would not trust some sham-wow website … (sorry, no offense to the dev team)
looks like decent site. RIP last.fm
Better yet: Switch to the free/open source Libre.fm ( http://libre.fm ). It can import all your data from Last.fm!
their wiki is here http://ideas.li...x.php/Main_Page and in particular you can take your music history with you http://ideas.li...sing_lastscrape — the future is open…
Why is “Jamwee” any better than “last.fm”? The post that advocates Jamwee comes off as an advertisement, an endorsement by a shill. I see nothing on the site to indicate one’s data wouldn’t be retained or distributed to anyone else.
libre.fm claims on their site that they “take your privacy seriously” followed by fairly clear descriptions of how one’s usage data would be kept. Even if I don’t believe that, libre.fm lets anyone run their own instance of the service and licenses the code under terms that let me run, inspect, share, and change the software to suit my needs. I could use that to start a competing service run on terms I find acceptable and offer that service to my friends who already trust me.
Even if you somehow get rid of RIAA, some other company will take their place. Like we say in Russia: “Sacred place is never empty”.
Great article, Michael!
What record company monopoly ? There are hundreds if not thousands of record companies
Most are imprints of the “big four” though. Especially the ones the RIAA are representing.
This won’t stop me from using Last.fm because I don’t listen to mainstream music, I don’t use P2P networks and I’m not a pirate.
Yes, it’s terrible businesses exchange user data behind our back, but you knew that was inevitable when you signed up, regardless of any privacy policy.
Information wants to be free. Music or user data, no difference.
This is what I don’t get: Why does the RIAA care about Last.fm?
The RIAA says, “LOL, 123.123.123.123 listens to Xyz band and we know his username is Metalhead666, and we saw that same IP downloading Xyz band from one of our undercover P2P nodes, let’s connect the dots and do what exactly?”
Last.fm users are not pirates, they’re listening to Internet radio which is not only legal but IMO more satisfying and less time consuming.
Last.fm offers a software called “Scrobbler”. This is the link to the download page:
http://www.last.fm/download
Last.fm describes what Scrobbler does very clearly, and I will let you decide the significance of using that software, which I understand a lot of Last.fm users have downloaded.
The answer to your question: this would be a non-story if Last.fm transmitted its members’ data to, say, a dog food company for research on how to better sell its products to dog lovers on Last.fm. Let me give you a hint: RIAA does not sell dog food.
Well yeah, but who cares if some record label is going to use our data to sell more records? Fero’s point is there’s nothing they can do with the data that’s actually harmful.
Heh… since you don’t use ANY of the last.fm’s useful features, WTF are you using it at all?
Your post seems like a marketing/PR bullsh*t post! You wouldn’t happen to be working for them, would you?
Personally, I deleted my account yesterday after I read this.
I use Last.FM quite a bit. I’ve even used the feature of uploading the titles from my iTunes library and play history. Other than basic annoyance that Last.FM and/or CBS shipped my data off, I don’t specifically see the personal liability that this incurred.
It’s not like tools like iTunes, WinAmp, etc. can really indicate that the playlist you have is of either legitimate or pirated origin. In my case, I have over 15K songs stored on my NAS. Each one of these songs are from rips of CDs that I’ve bought over the years.
Having no proof of provenance of uploaded music data means that such data would be dubiously actionable. True, the RIAA could go on a fishing expedition and send out the “pay us $3500″ letters to each Last.FM user, but doing so would prove fruitless against people such as myself. I can prove my rights to my list of imported songs. As much bad PR as the RIAA already gets for suing single mothers and dead grandmothers that may have actually had piracy occur through their home PCs, attempting to sue people that are provably innocent could put the whole process in danger. Courts don’t particularly like their resources being tied up for legal actions initiated with no basis.
So, “whatever”.
The thing that bothers me the most, apart from someone recording and forwarding my IP address, is the part of the last.fm privacy policy that tells us that last.fm’s software will search my computer for all my music files – whether I’m online or not – and upload the information to last.fm. This is much different than my uploading the information to get better music plays from their service….
I don’t work for CBS or Last.fm.
I’ll tell you this, my BBS was sharing the tracks of independent musicians before the Sound Blaster came out.
I could care less if Last.fm shares my information, what is the big secret?
So much hate for the RIAA because you want to download some embarrassing band you’ll forget about five years from now. Grow up. If you love music so much, go start a band and burn your own CDs, then you’ll be really cool.
So what do you use your Last.fm account for? It seems that you use for nothing useful.
One fear is that should the RIAA use this information to start suing people, innocent people may be accused and have to spend on lawyers to clear their names, or that a casual filesharer will be hit for big bucks for sharing a few songs.
I agree there is no way to stop the movement and they just dont get it the attorneys are the ones going all the way to the bank.
I am going to http://www.bueno.com
Apart from updating the original post we’ve been quiet on this story. The person who first leaked the news was terminated from CBS for the leak
So what do you use your Last.fm account for? It seems that you use for nothing useful.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand this is why I’ll probably not be using Last.fm for at least a little while.
I’ve been saying for years, Last.fm and this type of usage statistics system SHOULD be controlled by the Governments and not by private companies like CBS.
I don’t blame the Last.fm founders from cashing out on the buy by CBS, though the EU or some other Governmental entity should implement such unlimited culture tax and then base the redistribution of the subscription money directly to the most popular and liked active artists.
This is hardly appropriate use of tax payer money or a legitimate function of government to protect a play list that you voluntarily shared from being used in the first place.
I’m sorry I don’t wish to advance you a single euro to keep the digital detritus you shared “safe” and I’m curious as to why you think your listening habits are so special as to require the power of the state to back them up with violence.
Aptly put.
The abuse of taxes is yet to be realised as the next great injustice against value contributors.
ummm mike…
i thought whistle blower laws only applied to an individual if the individual was uncovering/dealing with potentiallu illegal activity…
it’s been awhile since i’ve had to look at the appropriate statutes, and of course things have changed…
could you care to point to the releveant fed statutes on this issue?
thanks
Isn’t deceptively acquiring and passing on personal information illegal in the USA?
LOLz!
no wait… QQ
/ sigh.
FYI: If a company violates it’s user privacy policy it is legally actionable.
Generally speaking, in the eyes of the court internet companies are granted deference to handle user data as they see fit. This is why Google is free to sell aggregated data to 3rd parties. However, to protect users rights a company must stay within the realms of its own given policies. If it doesn’t — as is apparently the case here — then the users that had their rights violated can bring an action against the site.
Mike,
Very kind of you to offer legal assistance to the terminated Last.fm employee, too often, especially amid the current banking fiasco, those who speak the truth are punished and silenced by the powers to be.
Seriously, though, any user who is uploading illegal content to any site, whether it be Last.fm/Seeqpod/etc. should be a lot more careful. The new Eminem CD is not worth $10,000 or possible jail time?? The loyalties of Last.fm only go so far for protecting their users, caveat emptor.
that isn’t how last.fm works.. you aren’t uploading songs to the service at all, you “scrobble” your plays and all you are sending to the service is that you listened to so and so at whenever.
I have a good mind to create tracks of me rambling and copy the metadata from the U2 album and “listen” to it (muted, of course. Even I cannot stand my ramblings) all day and all night on iTunes so that last.fm can scrobble it. and oh, ex-valley, ditto to you!
eh. . .. . dont talk about things you dont understand
Mike is brilliant . . . post this on memorial weekend friday. . . CBS wont be able to cook up an excuse with their pr team without canceling their vacations .. .
brilliant!
The new eminem isn’t worth the 10 dollars it costs! But good point besides that.
Woah, it looks like I’m the first person to comment, and that has never happened before (LOL)
The music industry at large still hasn’t recovered from the body blow that was NAPSTER and in trying to help them make it better, Apple iTunes has come in and made itself a nice little monopoly off the back of that, but we’re beginning to realise that’s not the whole solution It’s gonna get a lot bloodier yet.
I’m not a member of Last.fm so am not really affected. Data protection advocates should look into this very carefully because shit IS gonna hit the fan.
Also, I can’t sit back and say “I told you this was gonna happen” because I don’t think anyone saw this one coming. How it will affect members and listeners will remain to be seen in the next few weeks. Personally I’m still pissed at Pandora for closing off the relays and I.P. addresses for UK listeners.
First comment FAIL.
Lmao. Chris I love your Word Press Themes! But I will not use that Last.FM plugin anymore! Too Dangerous >.>
Ditto Chris Wallace!
I’ll eat my crow with some fava beans and a nice chianti…
http://parislem...comment-7777377
Way to stay on it TC.
Extremely, strong follow-up Mike.
Nice one Arrington… well done and thanks for providing legal costs to after those guys.
I don’t always agree with you, in fact hardly ever but at the core you know what’s good and right and you stand up for it and more important you show it with your actions…
Please let us know whether the guy agrees and how the case goes..
As a show of thanks, I recommend that every last.fm user shake Arrington’s hand.
That’s funny, considering Arrington’s stance on shaking hands.
Don’t forget to check out http://www.twibeo.com the twitter FF combo.
We can’t forget. You won’t let us.
I was hoping that maybe the folks at TechCrunch could modify the occurrences of his URL to be replaced with something like http://tinyurl....twibeo-spam-sux which has the side benefit of a referral trail that compounds in the intent of the message itself.
Seriously. James. Just clam up already.
please die quietly
Or loudly, your call you know.
wow! great article guys.
when you’re not preoccupied with twitter, TC can put out some great stories.
I’m guessing you wont be invited to the cbs holiday party after this post.
“Apart from updating the original post we’ve been quiet on this story. The person who first leaked the news was terminated from CBS for the leak”
I just want to state the obvious. Micheal Arrington and Techcrunch aren’t worth your job or ruining your life.
Don’t leak information to them. Don’t put yourself at risk for a dumb internet blog.
You won’t be compensated and the 15 minutes will fade very quickly.
one more tip, if your broker gives you access to a margin account, use it wisely. I saw a bottom today and went investment crazy with broker money.
That was really dumb.
Maybe their not worth risking your job for.
But if you know someone is doing something very wrong, be it criminal or moral, don’t you feel you should do something?
Chris’s advice, tell them you know, ask for a raise or some benefits.
The world is hardly a fair place. You have to watch out for yourself and mind your own business.
Otherwise you get fired, and wind up visiting job fairs and using food stamps. Furthermore your X years at the company will be worthless since your reference is now destroyed.
I don’t think you realize that not everyone is selfish like you.
Oh wait, that’s why you don’t realize it…
Right, because blackmail is SO much better than Whistle Blowing?
You have too much advice.
@ Chris
Some people actually want to improve the world and ensure laws are kept. I respect the one who blew the whistle and I respect TechCrunch for bringing it to light. Great post Mike.
This world needs more people with integrity and less people who only care about their own self-interest. Just my take.
But on the other side, it is difficult to do the right thing. It’s not for everyone, though I wish it were.
Good follow up, this post reminds one of the good old TC days when each post had some stuff like this in it. unlike today,sadly.
Awesome story. Come up with an actual person with a name, and I might believe it.
On balance I’m inclined to believe because they risk a defamation lawsuit and CBS have lots of money to waste on lawyers. I don’t subscribe to the idea that this is TC picking a fight.
The request by the CBS spokesperson is kinda a giveaway!
Nice work.
No more scrobbling from this last.fm ex-user. Shame on you last.fm & CBS.
Awesome journalism! Great story and the original is when I turned off scrobbling and have never used last.fm EVER again. They are liars, thieves and scumbags. What they did is disgusting. How did they ever think being sold to CBS would help them at all other than getting an initial giant payoff. I love the line about how the RIAA can substantially increase their stream rates. It’s a cartel! A racket!
I’d say you just wrecked the weekend for a whole bunch of people at CBS and Last.fm.
There is probable legal ground for a class-action suit on behalf of the millions of Last.fm users whose privacy rights have apparently been violated here.
CBS paid $280 million for Last.fm, methinks CBS can start to think about writing that money off their books, because this thing is going to blow up.
It is one thing to download tracks from p2p sites knowing the risk of getting sued, but it is entirely a different matter when one can listen to a “legitimate Internet radio” and end up handing over one’s private data to RIAA.
Yes, with intense interest, I would also like to hear Last.fm’s official response to this story.
A lot of confused Last.fm members on their own forum:
http://www.last.../21717/_/535934
As one member pointed out, Last.fm management should come out with a statement even if this is a long holiday weekend, because this is such serious matter that it could determine the life and death of Last.fm as a service (and a terrific one at that, as I used it frequently, in past tense, however).
While I don’t 100% believe this, I do think CBS is full of shit. I’ll try my best to switch to libre.fm (once this is proven some other way).
pwnd.
Ballsy combined with awesome = Bawlsome.
Now Richard is in full of shit.
Thanks for following through on this story, Mike, and not being intimidated.
Fight the power… Michael Arlington takes on Facebook and now CBS…. whose next?
is this the first thing cbs has done with last.fm since the acquisition? this once great site has languished for too long.
This and starting to charge for streaming in most of Europe is the only news I’ve seen from them in a while. Way to increase the value of your purchase, CBS.
There was a shitty redesign mid last year based around advertising space and generating page impressions. Downward spiral since then.
As a six year premium paying member of CBS Fantasy football I can now honestly say I will be moving my last league to Flea flicker.
I will use Pandora, and I think we open source contributors need to concentrate on building services to replace these types of privacy trust destroying executives.
I don’t remember my terms of service stating the entire communities listening habits would be used by third parties to conduct which hunts on under privileged and sometimes innocent victims.
I’m on a mission, everyone spread the word. We must do something to either save Last.FM or let them die. We can no longer trust CBS, they’ve lied, cheated, and most likely done much, much worse.
Thank you Mike. Like the FSF recently said, SAS is just as bad as software you don’t have the source code to modify. This story explains that it’s actually much worse, there are many more reasons why we should not use services that can’t be branched if treasonous behaviors like this occur between a service and the music loving kind souls who help build it.
I’m very sorry you didn’t find better funding Last.FM. I’ve been a big fan for a long time but like an old research colleague of mine said once, “Don’t you ever think that the entire reason CBS purchased this was to aid the RIAA? That was right after the sale.
Mike just bitch-slapped CBS Nice. This is better than Consumerist material. Every mouth watering sentence makes this a classic post.
But I especially like the comment on here about a potential class action lawsuit. That would be heaven.
These corporate pricks got their asses handed to them. Publicly. Friggin awesome.
I am having second thoughts of keeping my Rhapsody account active as well. I love how they seem to be pushing the legal issues for the users but:
1. We need to bankrupt (socially and financially) the RIAA
2. We need to somehow save Last.FM &/or recreate the same service in an open source manner. Then any company could buy & if these evil, perhaps unlawful types of actions took place then we could branch the service because it’s open source.
i wish they would spin off audioscrobbler as an open source project.
libre.fm is what you’re looking for.
nope
what i’m looking for is the original audioscrobbler technology/site from 2004, spun off as an open source project. libre.fm might aspire to recreate this, but it isn’t it (yet).
It’s only been open a month or so. Give it time.
The email is completely damning.
One sentence after another, it reveals the nature of an industry built on extortion (”We provided the data to the RIAA yesterday because we know from experience that they can negatively impact our streaming rates with publishers…”), deceit (”The team in the UK became irate because they had to do it a second time since we were told some of the data was corrupted. This time they transferred the data directly to them and in doing so they discovered who really made the request…”), cutthroat business dealings (”We’re just trying to help them stay afloat here it’s not like Pro memberships are earning any revenue…”), and on and on.
This is a Perry-Mason moment for TechCrunch.
Classic!
One sentence after another, it reveals the nature of an industry built on extortion (”We provided the data to the RIAA yesterday because we know from experience that they can negatively impact our streaming rates with publishers…”), deceit (”The team in the UK became irate because they had to do it a second time since we were told some of the data was corrupted. This time they transferred the data directly to them and in doing so they discovered who really made the request…”), cutthroat business dealings (”We’re just trying to help them stay afloat here it’s not like Pro memberships are earning any revenue…”), and on and on.
http://tinyurl.com/adiosjugar
http://tinyurl.com/rxjbfg
See the beauty of this is that the smiley face will make you more likely to click on his spam!
Meanwhile, back at the point: This is completely insane, and Last.fm has been removed from my computer (actually forgot it was still there).
Great work on this story!
TC I will moderate you spams for free. PLS let me do it.
Seriously, I don’t know any other top rated blog that has such a high number of spam comments, most of these spams can be easily taken care of by off-the-self wordpress (which you guys are using) plug-ins. Can be configured to auto-delete / ban / spam-tag comments.
Why is it so difficult?
Can you give me some free legal counsel? Being President is hella hard.
Will we see the Last of Last.fm ?
lameoid…
ya fuck the RIAA
This is especially bad for people who get press copies of pre-released music. I guess it wouldn’t be worth the hassle of having to explain your credentials in scrobbling supposedly “pirated” music… GRRR
There is actually a word for this behaviour in Swedish. We call it “dementimaskinen”, i.e. The Denial Machine. It often gets started at political parties when someone by mistake have said something that shouldn’t have been revealed.
For example, our secretary of foreign affairs in an interview said that Sweden’s National Defence Radio Establishment might swap intelligence information with foreign regimes, even dictatorships. When that shit hit the fan, the denial machine kicked in, claiming that he was falsely quoted, and that the National Defence Radio Establishment would never do such a thing. It turns out the denial was just technically true – it would be the Swedish government that would swap this material, not that agency itself. i.e. a situation very similar to this case.
… Well, Washington *IS* a denial machine, working 24/7 – You can actually feel the hot fumes it produces when you get closer to the city… and no wonder, the city has the highest concentration in the world of slimy snakes – err… meaning politicians and lawyers.
Good piece TC!
It would make you even more noble if you had apologized for the original piece.
To those that say this is not serious I have news for you: breaking the law is serious! Our society depends on the respect for the law, break it without consequences and society breaks down.
Vasco Duarte,
Clearly, you haven’t been paying attention to the legacy of George Bush and Dick Chaney. Laws only have consequences when someone enforces them. I only wish I had a last.fm account so I could join the class action suit against CBS. I see deep pockets and clear violation…
For real? woah this one is so surprising
Yeah, CBS, the network with the Illuminati eye as it’s icon.
In a world where so many things get glazed over this is the kind of invigorating fiery blood through your veins type reveal that makes you realize “No wait, taking it up the rear is not becoming tolerable anymore.”
I would be quivering like Kanye standing next to Mike Meyers if I were about to click publish. Gee if you can do this it might just mean we could all take a brick out of the mansions of hypocrisy and bring a mob with digital pitchforks and torches.
Wow! Where’s that collective Digg button because I think we can all digg a grave where the headstone reads last.fm. I think those last 2 letters will represent the words that come out of Richard’s mouth when he reads this.
“F*ck me!”
PS. HAVE THEY GOT YOUR FINGERPRINT
http://blog.las...-clean-metadata
way to misunderstand what audio fingerprinting was supposed to accomplish.
Thank you for bringing this story to light!
Thank you for not throwing in the towel Michael. The internet can be incredibly stupid (4chan) and incredibly retarded (also 4chan), if you had bowed to their demand that you retract the earlier post we may never have heard *any* of this.
Screw you Last.fm. And just so you know that statement right there is the polar opposite of what I was telling people a year ago, and I’m about to inform those same people as much with a link to here so they can see what you slimy dishonest bastards have done.
Perfect article.
I love how it’s written, seriously.
“NO, WAIT! ‘TO SERVE CUSTOMERS’, it’s . .it’s . . IT’S A COOKBOOK!”
Glad I switched to http://libre.fm a free alternative to lastfm.
Darn, I loved last.fm.. Is libre.fm any good?
it looks pretty good, I think http://www.jamwee.com might be useful too; especially if it has an audio player.
Well maybe now is the tiime for “20 Fantastic Ways to Find New Music That You Like (no Last.fm & Pandora Inside)” http://www.insp...-pandora-inside
I don’t understand this sentence in the email:
“We provided the data to the RIAA yesterday because we know from experience that they can negatively impact our streaming rates with publishers.”
This seems very unlikely. Publishers aren’t represented by RIAA. RIAA represents recording industry, not publishing industry. Streaming rates for publishing industry are usually determined by government bodies. This sentence doesn’t make sense.
Most publishing companies are either owned or subdivisions of the record companies. For example Universal’s division is actually called Universal Music Publishing Group.
I used lastFm quiet a bit and recommended to my family and friends, shame on you LastFm…
Let’s shift to http://libre.fm/
Well I am now highly comptemplating using Last Fm. RIAA are some sneaky bastards but still use such illegal means of research to get there data. Here’s some news for all you assholes who think you deserve something for the ones and zeros we have. Your gonna die, you won’t take it with you, and furthermore you’ll never get a dime out of my ass. I can give you plenty of the alternative, but you guys are already full of shit with all your bs cases.
(Remember all you intelligent geeks, nerds, pirates, crackers(Programmers) and ones who take care of the “internet” and networks. As Vlad the Impaler stated to the Turkish king. There is something greater then greed and power. And that is Fear.
Remember that when shit hits the fan with these assholes. That just want to take our money and destory our lives just for there own profit.)
Lighten up Francis.
Nice Stripes reference.