Wired.com has reported that London based social networking music service Last.fm has soft-launched an ad-free subscription service which means users can use the service without ads for $3 a month. The launch of the service has so far been quiet - it is only promoted on the site itself and someway down the home page - but the company says it expects to launch a "fully-fledged" subscription package in the early summer.
Details of the subscription service were confirmed in an interview undertaken by Wired with one of the service's founders, Martin Stiksel. He also said that two or three other new services would be offered this year, though did not offer any more information on what they would be.
He did, however, confirm that the company had been speaking to both EMI and Warner about the possiblity of granting 'mash-up' licences that would allow users of the service to legally distribute online mash-up bootleg tracks using music from the two majors' catalogues. Suggesting that such a mash-up licence would enable "1,000 Grey Albums", he said: "I believe this will be the next major development in music".