Nothing sets the mood for a road trip or all-night train ride like a kick-ass soundtrack. Today, the blogosphere is all atwitter – and rightly so – with the latest news from Last.fm:
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As of today, you can play full-length tracks and entire albums for free on the Last.fm website.
Something we’ve wanted for years””for people who visit Last.fm to be able to play any track for free””is now possible. With the support of the folks behind EMI, Sony BMG, Universal and Warner””and the artists they work with””plus thousands of independent artists and labels, we’ve made the biggest legal collection of music available to play online for free, the way we believe it should be.
Exact details are still up in the air during their initial public beta. For now, users can stream any track up to three times before a friendly reminder kicks in alerting you that Last.fm’s “soon-to-be announced subscription service will give you unlimited plays and some other useful things.”
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CD, DVD and other “hard” media formats have long been dead-men-walking. It’s only a matter of time before even the now ubiquitous MP3 player is obsolete. Save for the most remote, non-networked corners of the globe, you simply won’t need one. Grab your laptop (or web-connected cell phone), pay a flat monthly fee to a service like Last.fm’s and you’ll be blessed with the privilege of listening to virtually any song any time.
As a hardcore minimalist traveler (and flashpacker to boot), I for one couldn’t be more excited.
It begs the question: what’s in store now for Apple’s iTunes Store and AmazonMP3’s digital downloads service?