Last.fm Founders’ Last Interview: ‘Frankly, We Need Time Out’
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“Frankly, we needed some time out,” Last.fm co-founder Felix Miller (centre), speaking with Martin Stiksel (left), told me in one of their last interviews before leaving the leadership of the social music site. The pair are treating it casually. Miller added: “We don’t have any project to go to either - we just didn’t have a big holiday in the last seven years.”
SEE ALSO: Updated: Last.fm Founders Quit, CBS’ Goodman GM For Now; But Why?
The pair, who are leaving together with Richard Jones, may need a rest, but Miller still enthusiastically stressed the success he says Last.fm has been both as an independent and under CBS: “We put Last.fm in great shape - recent initiatives have put it on a really good footing. For a company like Last.fm to still double in size every year after seven years… When we got purchased, we had less than a third of the current users. The mission was to make it big, blow it out.”
—Was there a culture clash with CBS?: CBS (NYSE: CBS) president Leslie Moones once told me: “They’re very different from your usual CBS execs - they wear torn t-shirts and don’t wear ties.” Hasn’t fitting the independent Shoreditch startup in to a megacorp been tough? Stiksel told me: “He never told us off; we were still never asked to shave. The Last.fm story really started for us seven years ago. There have been different challenges at various stages - the fact we’re so massive now has raised the stakes all around us. But the culture had changed any way - it morphed out of our own little project in to something that reaches over 30 million users every month.” Now Stiksel says Last.fm is “a very big piece of that new CBSi music conglomerate”.
—Were you under an earn-out clause?: Miller said their announcement on the two-year anniversary of the acquisition is merely a “total coincidence” that the company’s legal team had warned them about. Stiksel: “There was no time limit or restriction on us having to stay with Last.fm after the acquisition - we just wanted to set it up in the best possible way.”
—Challenges from competitors, the business: YouTube, Last.fm and other music sites have often complained about excessive PRS For Music rates to play music, to the point where YouTube said it threatened its survival. Stiksel: It’s been a complex relationship always - we’ve always said the rates are very steep.” Any update on negotiations to bring back Warner Bros. Records repertoire? None, they said…
But that’s no disaster: “Last.fm was never just about listening to music”, Stiksel said, pointing to the scrobbling, friend building and recommendation features. “Last.fm has one of the best possible business models in the whole online music space - because it doesn’t depend on only streaming music like other services that have sprung up recently.” Services like Spotify? Yep, like Spotify and others, they said.
—Those RIAA allegations: Both Last.fm and CBS have denied TechCrunch’s story so many times (remember “TechCrunch is full of shit”?), I hardly needed to ask. But, speaking on claims user data was handed to the Recording Industry Association of America, Stiksel said: “It’s really - it’s total rubbish - it was never based on anything - it’s not based on anything in fact whatsoever.” Last.fm’s new London-based PR described the reports as “fictitious”.
—So what next?: Both say the priority is a long holiday. Stiksel: “We don’t have any project to go to either.” Will they remain in the music space, perhaps spending more time on developing and startup activity? “The space is still very interesting.”
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