Confirmed: CBS Buys Last.FM
Acquisition rumors have lately been hit or miss: some were totally off (like the Microsoft - Yahoo deal) while some turned out to be correct (like the Google buys Feedburner one).
Well, here’s a new one for you to chew on: CBS acquires Last.FM for $280 million. This deal, if it goes through, doesn’t surprise. Last.FM is a great service, has 15 million users, and has recently announced a video counterpart to its site, as well as signed contracts with several big content providers.
On our scale of corporate evilness, this one scores quite bad. Media powerhouses like CBS are as evil (greedy) as they come, and we wouldn’t like to see Last.FM turned into some vessel for promoting CBS content. Thread lightly, CBS; this is Web 2.0, and users don’t like to be manhandled.
If this turns out to be wrong, blame Mashable.
*update: if LA Times seems like a credible enough source to you, consider it confirmed.
May 30th, 2007 at 11:55 am
Must be true, it was on the BBC news. Lucky dogs.
May 30th, 2007 at 1:10 pm
[…] The news last night that CBS had ponied up $280m for Last.fm is being heralded by some as the awakening of the beast to the new reality and being questioned by others as to whether CBS will end up ruining its Web 2.0 acquisitions. […]
April 23rd, 2009 at 2:35 pm
I am going to have to sign up to receive your feed. This is good stuff
April 23rd, 2009 at 2:59 pm
Really cool blog. I found it on yahoo. I am looking forward to read more posts.