Basically, the upshot was you gave away too much information, and in doing that, you gave away your power.

The overall message I got from all those complaints was: they didn’t want to know who could pay their way and who couldn’t. In their eyes, a blanket fee imposed on all would have been fairer. You were too honest for your own good, in other words.

Companies that have set out with similar parameters don’t face such vitriol. It’s accepted. One or two might grumble but if they never had it, they don’t miss it. e.g. Spotify, Pandora, however many others.

People in Last.fm complained not just because you had to make some changes, but also because it brought home just how bad the economy is. i.e. if something that’s supposedly self-sustaining and free (cheap enough to run without our money) suddenly imposing fees, then how bad is the economy exactly?

So you met with denial as much as cluelessness.

(in my never humble opinion)

I like the idea of a hybrid commercial/sharing economy. Kind of reminds me of compassionate economy I was reading about not long ago, which is capitalism but nicer.

It comes down to this:
– act like an adult: figure out if streaming radio is worth 3 € or not, either spend the 3 € or don’t, leave or don’t. The world really doesn’t care. Trust me. Even if you announce it over and over.
– act like a child and find yet another way to justify what comes down to “MOM, that kid has more toys than I do – it’s not fair”.

Let’s move on already.

No double this is confusing for you, you never saw large swaths of the EU as have-nots. But just ask them about their shopping habits when they make it to Germany, the U.K. or the U.S.A (amazing how you hit it perfectly, those really are centers of western consumerism).

The upside, you’ve no doubt reminded lots of the have-nots that they actually HAVE. I know this because I’ve spent the majority of my life not in one of your special countries before coming to the States. It will spur them to more action, just like Brazil is taking the Internet & software development worlds by storm. Oops, that’s an upside for everyone who’s not you ;-)

This is coming off as rude and mean. I’m sorry, that wasn’t the intention, but it’s probably not worth the trouble of rewording it to be softer, the point might get lost.

My problem is that I just discovered Last.fm two months ago, and hadn’t had enough time to decide whether I like the service or not, at least not enough to decide whether I want to pay a monthly fee (I live in Canada). So, Last.fm lost me because I actually have a fairly good mix on my iPod and the Genius results are good within that mix.

If Last.fm had been something that I felt I couldn’t live without, I’d probably be subscribing. I pay for a number of other services on a regular basis. Unfortunately, your timing sucked, at least as far as I’m concerned.

If you actually read the comments in response to the last.fm announcement, you will see that it was the inequality that pissed people off to the point of leaving the service.

Had last.fm charged -everyone- equally, and not pissed off 95% of the world population by reducing them to “some parts of the world”, my guess is things have would gone differently.

Both last.fm’s way of handling -and- communicating this was horrible and largely to blame for how this played out.