So, as reported yesterday, and confirmed yesterday afternoon, social music webby thing Last.fm has been bought by US media conglom types CBS. The takeover ends months of speculation (surely you were all speculating on this one right? Well, we were, though we do speculate a lot) that the London based independent was being courted by major media players. The online network, which enables users to discover and recommend music to others by tracking what music they play, has an estimated 15 million members, and was acquired by CBS for $280 million, making its three founders overnight multi-millionaires. Bastards (Not really, they're lovely. Lovely bastards).
One of those founders, Martin Stiksel, told reporters yesterday: "This move will really support us to get every track ever recorded and every music video ever made onto Last.fm. With a strong partner like CBS, this is now within our reach".
On how users of the up-until-now proudly independent music service would react to the involvement of a media conglom, Stiksel continued: "When we said revolution we mean that - we put the users in charge. CBS gets this. They understand that consuming media is changing, the patterns are changing".
CBS CEO Leslie Moonves added: "Last.fm is one of the most well established, fastest growing online community networks out there. They have a great management team that understands how to build an engaged and passionate community where users learn, discover and share music globally. Their demographics also play perfectly to CBS's goal to attract younger viewers and listeners across our businesses. Last.fm adds a terrific interactive extension to all of our properties and also is a huge step in CBS Corporation's overall strategy of expanding our reach online to transition from a content company into an audience company".
Last.fm will retain its own identity within the CBS group, and will continue to be run by its founders, Stiksel, Felix Miller and Richard Jones.