Fans of the Foo fighters, Kings of Leon or Natasha Bedingfield will soon be able to listen to their music through the social music site Last.fm.
New York — Last.fm, the online social music network, today announced it has reached a content deal with Sony BMG to offer the label’s extensive catalogue of recordings to more than 20 million users of Last.fm’s radio streaming service.
“As part of the agreement SONY BMG’s extensive catalogue of recordings, which includes some of the most popular artists of today, as well as classic tracks from some of the greatest artists of all time, will be made available
“The Last.fm streaming service will give our established artists a platform through which they can reach new audiences, and their unique recommendation system will provide our emerging artists with an important opportunity to build their fan base,” commented Thomas Hesse, President Global Digital Business and U.S. Sales, SONY BMG Music Entertainment.
Last.fm is one of the biggest music streaming operations in the world, and recommends new music to listeners by monitoring their music-listening habits on their computers and portable music players.
Last.fm also allows users to connect with other listeners with similar music tastes, to custom-build their own radio stations and to watch music video clips.
The site recommends new music by tracking a user’s listening habits using a tool called "Audioscrobbler" and matching preferences with that of other users. Around 500m scrobbles, or plays of individual songs, are tracked by the site every month.
The deal officially endorses the Sony content accessible on Last.fm, making the company’s full music catalogue available to users who can listen for free online or pay to download tracks via 7digital, the music downloads store, or through Amazon.
Today’s deal follows similar partnerships with EMI, Warner and indie label groups The Orchard and IODA.
Last.fm now claims to have the most comprehensive music catalogue of any online radio station.
The partnership with Sony BMG — and the addition of the Sony BMG catalog, which includes major artists like Avril Lavigne, Velvet Revolver, Bruce Springsteen, Beyonce, and the Foo Fighters — Last.fm offers the biggest catalog of any Web-based streaming service in the world, with access to nearly 3.5 million tracks.
“This partnership affords Last.fm users a whole new set of terrific content for building community.” “We have always aimed to have everything ever recorded available to listen to on our site, and having access to Sony’s collection of some of the world’s most popular music takes us another huge step closer,” said Martin Stiksel, co-founder of the service.
In addition, listening to their established favorites, users in the Last.fm community will now be able to discover new artists from the SONY catalogue, thanks to Last.fm’s unique recommendation system.
A spokesperson for Last.fm said the deal was a powerful marketing tool for Sony, allowing them to reach a new audience of music fans and build a powerful support base for new bands.
London-based Last.fm was recently acquired by US television broadcaster CBS for £141m.
With this partnership in place, the addition of such a major catalogue boosts Last.fm’s mission of building the biggest and best online music community, as it takes their already unrivalled music database to another level.