Fears fulfilled? Big corporate stupidity, part 7638

In May 2007 I wrote a post entitled “A requiem for last.fm?” in which I expressed my anxiety (as a very happy customer of last.fm) at CBS‘s ability to f*ck things up:

As a customer, I just hope that in the medium term they are allowed to continue to innovate and especially that they are able to continue to treat their customers with respect. As partners. That may seem self-evident, but the track record of the music industry in this regard does not inspire much confidence. Indeed it is testimony to the compelling and real value of creative artists and their product, that the industry continues to function at all. If music truly was a ‘discretionary’ good, I suspect the industry would have collapsed on itself as customers disgusted by the convoluted and adversarial service they are asked to endure simply said ‘enough, I’ll take my money elsewhere…’ There is also the more universal (non-sector specific) issue of the inability of large organisations to avoid suffocating innovation.

So when I read things like this, well I wonder, sadly, if my fears are being fulfilled:

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: 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. Last.fm staffers were outraged, say our sources, but the data had already been sent to the RIAA.

At best, CBS is living down to low expectations: once again large corporate antibodies do their best to kill off the virus of innovation.

It’s really sad because last.fm not only has a great product but one where – if CBS spent less time, energy and money on lawyers and corporate pencil pushers – and more on building and promoting the business – they would discover that there are real, paradigm shifting, monetizable business opportunities screaming out to be truly developed. But of course many, perhaps all of these would probably end up destroying the old businesses and ways of operating. Hard to get the turkeys to vote for that…

My last two significant music purchases, and the last live music event I went to were all driven by last.fm. The music purchases were buying (several) albums of a couple artists I had never before heard of which last.fm recommended to me on the basis of my listening history. No way I would have discovered them otherwise. No way. Not at my age anyway. And by the way both of these artists are reasonably obscure – ie have not been promoted up the ying yang by the traditional manufactured music business. So the profit margins are great. No wasted marketing spend. And the “Events recommended for you” functionality is quite frankly unbeatable – geographically and musically relevant. Blows any other events listing service out of the water. Awesome.

I’m a paying customer of last.fm but if packaged in the right way, I’d be happy to pay even more. And it’s not because I’m particularly generous. It’s because they provide a bloody good service and I think it gives value for money. And by the way I’m pretty unhappy about them having sent my listening data to the RIAA. I’m happy and chose to give this data to last.fm because I get value from it and I trust(ed) them. The RIAA? I can’t say anything nice so will leave it at that.

If Apple had bought last.fm it would be ruling the world right now. I wonder if this was ever an option that was on the table?

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• Deny This, Last.fm (techcrunch.com)
• Did Last.fm Just Hand Over User Listening Data To the RIAA? (techcrunch.com)
• Last.fm officially respond to Techcrunch. Calls them “full of shit”. (thenextweb.com)
• CBS Pulls Last.fm Into New Interactive Group (beatcrave.com)

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