| Acquired by | CBS |
| Price | $280M |
| Date | 5/07 |
| Terms | Cash |
| Website | last.fm |
| Blog | blog.last.fm |
| @lastfm | |
| Category | Games, Video and Entertainment |
| Phone | +44 (0) 20 7780 7080 |
| Employees | 70 |
| Founded | 1/02 |
| TOTAL | $5M |
| FUNDING TOTAL | $5M |
| Series A, 5/06 Index Ventures | $5M |
Last.fm is a social networking company which revolves around its music recommendation engine. It offers events, wiki-created artist profiles and discographies and community forums. Unlike competitor Pandora, Last.fm’s recommendations are not generated by matching similar musical attributes, instead it offers internet radio stations programmed by comparing user data to the rest of the Last.fm user community. This data is submitted (or “scrobbled” to use the company’s terminology) via more than 600 devices and media players.
Another major differentiator for Last.fm from its competitors is the extensive API offering which allows products like [Spotify] (http://spotify.com), [SongKick] (http://www.songkick.com), and [Microsoft]’s XBox Kinect to use Last.fm user data to drive important features. Dozens of smaller developer have also built on the API, creating a vibrant, ad-hoc research and development community around music services exposing users playlists and favorite tracks on social networks like [Facebook], [Myspace], and [Tumblr].
| Website | Last.fm |
| Stage | Live |
| Launch Date | July 12, 2007 |
| Tags | social-music |
Users “scrobble” the music they listen to on their ipod or computer through a downloaded application that records what they listen to. The scrobbler then sends this data to Last.fm’s servers. Last.fm compares user data to arrange personalized radio stations based upon your favorite music. The engine produces a station by grabbing music from other users’ whose taste is similar to your own. Additionally, users can have a radio station made around a single artist. These stations are created by recommending music that other users listen to in addition to your chosen artist. Additionally, Last.fm has largely incorporated social networking into its site. It has user profiles, events and widgets for your website. This is quite appropriate considering recommendations and stations are generated using communal data.
| Website | last.fm/widgets |
| Stage | Live |
| Launch Date | July 12, 2007 |
| Tags | social-music |
The Last.fm widget allows users access to personalized radio on sites other than Last.fm. These sites currently include MySpace, Facebook , LiveJournal, your blog and your Google Sidebar. On the Facebook application (shown), users can make personalized radio stations based upon the artists in their “favorite music” section. Users may also listen to friends’ personalized stations who have installed the application.
| Tags | iphone-app |
The last.fm iphone app aloows users to listen to free streaming radio, and discover new artists on their iphone.
Last.fm iphone app
