Last.fm Makes Music Deal with Sony

Social music service Last.fm has entered a music deal with Sony which will make the entire Sony BMG catalog available to Last.fm users.

Social music service Last.fm has entered into a pact with music label Sony BMG which will make the label’s entire music catalog available to Last.fm users for sharing and recommendations.

“The Last.fm streaming service will give our established artists a platform through which they can reach new audiences, and their unique recommendation system will provide our emerging artists with an important opportunity to build their fan base,” said Thomas Hesse, Sony BMG’s President of Business and U.S. Sales, in a release.

Last.fm is one of the biggest music streaming operations in the world, and recommends new music to listeners by monitoring their music-listening habits on their computers and poertable music players. The partnership with Sony BMG—and the addition of the Sony BMG catalog, which includes major artists like Avril Lavigne, Velvet Revolver, Bruce Springsteen, Beyonce, and the Foo Fighters—Last.fm offers the biggest catalog of any Web-based streaming service in the world, with access to nearly 3.5 million tracks.

At the end of May 2007, CBS purchased Last.fm for $280 million. At the time, CBS said it planned to let Last.fm operate as an independent entity, while applying some of its community and interactive strategies to CBS’s own online properties.