Scrobble - Music Catalogue

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, most songs by The Beatles, the Pet Shop Boys and Madonna, among others, are unavailable for streaming. 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.