Beginning today, Last.fm users will notice new beta track pages that offer up song previews and additional links to partner services where they can go to stream tracks in their entirety.
The new strategy means that Last.fm will primarily focus on music discovery, a strategy similar to one that Google adopted last year, though Last.fm seems particularly focused on its recommendation engine.
On that front, Last.fm writes, "Our scrobbling data shows that, for some time now, people have been using multiple music services and devices, then coming back to their Last.fm profiles to answer the question 'what should I hear next?' and to see / show off all their listening united in one place."
The crux of the matter, however, is buried a bit deeper in the blog post on the reworked "beta" offering (quoted content bolded for emphasis only):
"These changes also mean that we are retiring our own on-demand track streaming, which we’ve run for the last two years in the US, UK, and Germany ... We feel strongly that we can better fulfill our core mission by instead connecting our users to services in the ecosystem that, unlike us, focus primarily on a jukebox-in-the-sky streaming experience."
While the end of on-demand streaming is a huge departure from Last.fm's original mission, it does appear as if its partners are better equipped to stream on-demand tracks, especially given the associated legal and monetary challenges. The question remains: Can Last.fm remain relevant as just a music discovery service?
