{"id":2436701,"date":"2026-05-29T09:54:51","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T09:54:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2436701"},"modified":"2026-05-29T09:54:51","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T09:54:51","slug":"last%c2%b7fm-goes-independent-19-years-after-280m-cbs-acquisition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/last%c2%b7fm-goes-independent-19-years-after-280m-cbs-acquisition\/","title":{"rendered":"Last\u00b7fm goes independent 19 years after $280m CBS acquisition"},"content":{"rendered":"<br><div>\n\n\t\t\n\t\t\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Let us take you back\u2026 way back, to the days (specifically: May 2007) when a streaming personalised-radio startup was valued at $280m in an acquisition by a US media giant.\n\n\n\n<\/p><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/technology\/2007\/may\/31\/news.musicnews\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The giant was CBS and the startup was Last\u00b7fm<\/a>, which had 15 million users at the time streaming music and keeping track of (or \u2018scrobbling\u2019 in the term it coined) their habits.\n\n\n\n<\/p><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">19 years later, CBS is now part of an even bigger media group, Paramount Skydance Corporation, but as of this week Last\u00b7fm is\u00a0<em>not<\/em>.\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n<aside>\t\t\t\n\t\t<\/aside>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cToday, Last\u00b7fm begins a new chapter as an independent company. Ownership has changed, but the product you use every day has not,\u201d\u00a0<a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/support.last.fm\/t\/last-fm-is-now-independent\/118591\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">announced the company on its support forum<\/a>.\n\n\n\n<\/p><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cYour account, your listening history, and your data remain exactly where they are. The team building Last\u00b7fm is the same. The service continues as normal\u2026 We\u2019ll share more about what comes next in the weeks ahead.\u201d\n\n\n\n<\/p><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The post added that going independent means \u201cwe can focus fully on building listening insights and community features for music fans\u201d.\n\n\n\n\n<\/p><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk\/company\/04569646\/filing-history\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Last\u00b7fm still files financials with Companies House in the UK<\/a>. The last set, for 2024, revealed that its annual revenues grew from just under \u00a32m in 2023 to \u00a32.2m in 2024, but that it swung from an operating profit of \u00a31.5m to an operating loss of \u00a3690.3k over that period.\n\n\n\n<\/p><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">68.5% of its revenues came from subscriptions in 2024. Last\u00b7fm charges \u00a34.99 a month or \u00a349.99 a year\u00a0<a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.last.fm\/pro\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">for its \u2018Pro\u2019 tier<\/a>, which gives users more reports on their listening as well as removing ads and giving early access to new features.\n\n\n\n<\/p><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The challenge for the newly-independent company \u2013\u00a0but also the exciting opportunity \u2013\u00a0is how to grow that business and reach a new generation of music listeners, including those who weren\u2019t even born when it enjoyed its original heyday.\n\n\n\n<section id=\"block-35\" class=\"below-content widget widget_block\"><nav class=\"jp-relatedposts-i2 wp-block-jetpack-related-posts\" data-layout=\"grid\" aria-label=\"Related Stories\"><h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Related Stories<\/h3><\/nav><\/section><section id=\"block-32\" class=\"below-content widget widget_block\"><aside>\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<\/section><section id=\"block-25\" class=\"below-content widget widget_block\">\n\n<\/section><\/div>\r\n<p><em> \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\r\n<p><em> \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source musically.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Let us take you back\u2026 way back, to the days (specifically: May 2007) when a streaming personalised-radio startup was valued at $280m in an acquisition by a US media giant. The giant was CBS and the startup was Last\u00b7fm, which had 15 million users at the time streaming music and keeping track of (or \u2018scrobbling\u2019 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2436702,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[478269,21737],"class_list":["post-2436701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","tag-last-fm","tag-top-stories"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Last\u00b7fm-goes-independent-19-years-after-280m-CBS-acquisition.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2436701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2436701"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2436701\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2436703,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2436701\/revisions\/2436703"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2436702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2436701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2436701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2436701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}