last.fm announced yesterday that international users of their free streaming music service have to pay a subscription fee of 3 Euros per month, starting on the 30th March 2009. Only for users in Germany, United Kingdom and United States nothing will change and the formerly free streaming service will still be free.

Well, I am from Germany and a paying subscriber since 2005, having scrobbled nearly 30,000 songs into my profile. I don’t have a problem with paying for a, in my eyes, excellent service I regularly use. Even if it’s on the Internet. And obviously there won’t be a change for subscribers, it only affects those users using last.fm for free.

Judging from the comments on the last.fm-blog, there are still people believing everything’s free on the internet. Only a few see the commercial reason behind the move. last.fm concentrates on their biggests markets (DE, UK and US) where the income from advertising seems to pay for the costs of the free music streaming. BTW, you don’t see ads when you opt in for a subscription.

Of course you can argue if this is just the influence from a big bad corp like CBS, trying to squeeze the last drop of money from yourself. But what the heck, nothing is free today. And if good chunks of the money last.fm collects, gets back to the smaller independent artists/labels, it’s certainly ok. Fingers crossed.

But what I am more afraid off is I am fearing last.fm to lose the international flair and becoming another (web) radio station playing the commercial bullshit the big major labels produce today. This would really suck.

Discussion about last.fm on twitter: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=last.fm