A German digital music aggregator called Finetunes has said it is considering legal action against Last.fm over allegations the music recommendation service is streaming music they control in the digital domain without a licence. To get things going, a cease and desist letter has already been posted.
Finetunes is demanding Last.fm remove any of tracks owned by labels it represents, that they provide an account of how many times their tracks have been previously streamed, and that they reveal where they got the recordings from in the first place. Finetunes have a catalogue of 200,000 tracks from various German independents - it's not clear how many have been streaming via the last.fm website.
Finetunes CEO Oke Gottlich, who claims past attempts to speak to Last.fm have been unsuccessful, told reporters: "Finetunes supports the growth of the digital-music market with innovative business models such as Last.fm. But it is not acceptable that the artists' music is just taken away from them, and used extensively without any compensation".
Last.fm have said they have "no comment to make at this stage" regarding Finetunes' claims, not even to confirm or deny the receipt of the cease and desist.