Last.fm -- listen to almost any album or track, free, legal, on-demand

Cafe Society
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Last.fm made an announcement today. They’ve worked out a deal with the big four music companies and the royalty associations to provide full-length albums available to stream on demand for free to the user. The catch is after three listens, they want you to buy an as-yet-unavailable subscription. But still – full-length entire albums on demand, for free. Pretty awesome.

They’re paying the artists directly, per-play, and independent artists can opt-in to the system as well.

I’ve got a pretty eclectic taste in music, and 40 of my top-listened-to 100 albums are available. These include Dane Cook’s “Harmful if Swallowed” standup, Loudon Wainwright III’s “Strange Weirdos” album of music from or inspired by Knocked Up, Moxy Fruvous’ “Bargainville”, Weird Al’s newest, Ray Charles’ “Genius Loves Company”, Train, The Who, Lauren Kennedy, The Apples in Stereo…the list goes on.

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That’s fantastic! I’ve been using last.fm for years as an alternative to radio, so it’s wonderful to hear that they’re expanding their services to include full-length tracks from mainstream albums.

I just hope this doesn’t shift away their focus from obscure and independent artists. They’ve introduced me to all sorts of wonderful new bands since I started using their “sounds like” streaming audio… hopefully this will continue.