Music Catalogue
Last.fm's music library contains well over 12 million individual audio tracks from artists on all the major commercial and independent labels. Users are not allowed to upload copyrighted audio files but commercially available albums are regularly added by Last.fm staff. The music catalogue includes a wide variety of genres including popular music, classical, opera and musicals, as well as many little known and specialist recordings which are no longer generally available. For licensing and other reasons, there are significant gaps in Last.fm's music catalogue, and tracks that used to be available can disappear. E.g., as of 2012, no music by The Beatles or The Pet Shop Boys are available for streaming, and most tracks by Madonna, LMFAO and many other popular artists are also unavailable. Most recent releases are also not always added immediately.
In February 2007 Warner Music, the world's third-largest music company, announced that it had signed a deal to allow its entire catalogue to be played on Last.fm. Warner's music would be made available over Last.fm's service in Europe and North America. The site's co-founder, Martin Stiksel, said they were also in talks with the other three major labels and content holders. However in June 2008 Warner cancelled its deal with last.fm and removed all Warner artists from the site's on demand streaming catalogue, Warner have indicated that they are in disagreement over the financial compensation offered by last.fm.
On 9 July 2007, it was announced that Last.fm had also signed a deal with the Sony BMG record label. The partnership will give the service's users access to the entire Sony BMG catalogue of music.
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Famous quotes containing the words music and/or catalogue:
“If music in general is an imitation of history, opera in particular is an imitation of human willfulness; it is rooted in the fact that we not only have feelings but insist upon having them at whatever cost to ourselves.... The quality common to all the great operatic roles, e.g., Don Giovanni, Norma, Lucia, Tristan, Isolde, Brünnhilde, is that each of them is a passionate and willful state of being. In real life they would all be bores, even Don Giovanni.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)
“Ay, in the catalogue ye go for men,
As hounds and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs,
Shoughs, water-rugs, and demi-wolves, are clept
All by the name of dogs.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)