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Last.fm founders step down
By CMU Editorial | Published on Thursday 11 June 2009
Last.fm’s three founders, Richard ‘RJ’ Jones, Felix Miller, and Martin Stiksel, have announced that they are leaving the now CBS-owned online music statistics and recommendation, social networking and information service thingy.
The trio first came together when Miller and Stiksel began using Jones’ listening-statistics-logging-system, Audioscrobbler – which he had originally designed for a project at university – to power the recommendations component of their online radio service. Last.fm and Audioscrobbler merged fully in 2005, and the company was purchased by CBS in May 2007 for $280 million.
No exact reason for the three men’s departure has been given, as yet. However, given that it’s almost exactly two years since CBS’s purchase of Last.fm, it is possible this may have always been the plan. Certainly the three founders seem keen to insist their departure isn’t the result of any dramatic falling out with or shift in policy by their service’s major player owners.
In a statement, they said: “After two years running Last.fm within CBS we feel the time is right to begin the process of handing over the reins. 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”.
They added: “It’s been a privilege working with the incredible team here in our London office, and we’re extremely proud of what we’ve achieved together. Last.fm’s users have more than doubled in the last 12 months (we are now at an all-time high of 37.3M monthly unique visitors), and we’re confident the site will continue to go from strength to strength. Being a part of CBS, and the recently formed CBSi music group, continues to open up many opportunities for Last.fm. Recent product releases such as the new visual radio, and the Last.fm on XBox announcement, are an indication of how much more Last.fm will achieve”.
As with many online music services, despite its large user base it is still not 100% clear what the long-term business model for Last.fm will be. Although it offers paid subscription accounts, Last.fm is largely ad-funded at the moment, and it’s not clear if advertising revenues are really enough to make the operation pay.
Recently it withdrew on-demand streaming services from free accounts in territories where ad revenues were particularly poor, which was understandably unpopular with many users in affected countries. At last week’s Making Music Pay conference in London, a Last.fm rep admitted that growing the number of paying subscribers was important for their business, even in countries like the UK where the ad-funded free-to-use streams are still available.
No announcement has yet been made about who Jones, Miller and Stiksel will be “handing over the reins” to or what their post-Last.fm plans are.
