Corporate rock sucks #11: Last.fm succumbs to the desire to be a small fish in a big pond…

Once again it's sad to be reminded that the Internet is nothing but a bunch of sharks cirlcing every promising start-up with a desire to "buying credibility" rather than establishing it. Last.fm have now succumbed to the desire to be a part of something bigger rather than carrying on being something special and unique in their own right. Like the lovely Flickr before them (and countless other websites I don't love as much) they have snapped up that lovely big cheque that was waved in front of them and suddenly, rather than having the feel of a community owned (spiritually if not financially) website it is now nothing more than a marketing arm of a corporation.

I was happy to regularly donate to last.fm but I suspect I won't be stumping up cash to CBS and you know what, I'm not sure they'd care because they don't care about the user - they care about the money they can make and 20 quid a year (or whatever) from me is not where the money in last.fm is to be made. That money will be made by selling chart data, and demographic data, and listening behaviour, and the myriad of other ways of exploiting what the last.fm community has built.

Shame on you last.fm, or maybe just shame on me becaues I believed (just like I believed with Flickr before you) that you were maybe different.

I have to admit that I do still stump up cash to Yahoo for Flickr and maybe, like Flickr, they may be able to cling onto the part of them that does make them unique - but I shan't love them the way I used to...just like I don't love Flickr any more...

It seems a shame that I seem to write one of these posts every few months.