Last.fm Announces Global Partnership With SONY BMG Music Entertainment

Last.fm Announces Global Partnership With SONY BMG Music Entertainment

Complete SONY BMG Music Entertainment catalogue to be made available to Last.fm users

NEW YORK, July 9 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Last.fm, the online social music network, today announced a new global content agreement with SONY BMG Music Entertainment. As part of the agreement SONY BMG's extensive catalogue of recordings, which includes some of the most popular artists of today, as well as classic tracks from some of the greatest artists of all time, will be made available to the 20 million users of Last.fm's online radio streaming service.

As well as listening to their established favourites, users in the Last.fm community will now be able to discover new artists from the SONY catalogue, thanks to Last.fm's unique recommendation system. The addition of such a major catalogue boosts Last.fm's mission of building the biggest and best online music community, as it takes their already unrivalled music database to another level.

Martin Stiksel, Last.fm co-founder, said, "This partnership affords Last.fm users a whole new set of terrific content for building community. We've always aimed to have everything ever recorded available to listen to on our site, and having access to Sony's collection of some of the world's most popular music takes us another huge step closer."

Last.fm -- recently acquired by CBS Corporation (NYSE: CBS.A; CBS) -- is an online music radio service that can intelligently recommend new music to its users based on their established listening habits, by tracking what they play on their PC or MP3 player. With this partnership in place, the site's music catalogue is now far and away the biggest of any web radio service in the world.

"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," commented Thomas Hesse, President Global Digital Business and U.S. Sales, SONY BMG Music Entertainment.

About Last.fm

Founded in 2002 in London, Last.fm is the online, social music revolution that connects people with music and artists with listeners. By joining the Last.fm community, music fans can choose to share their music preferences by linking their media player to the Last.fm database. This database is populated continually with over 500 million monthly track submissions from Last.fm music fans. As a result, Last.fm can intelligently recommend songs, artists, local concerts and even other members based on their musical tastes. Thanks to partnerships with EMI, Warner Music Group, independent aggregators The Orchard and IODA, and more than 100,000 independent musicians and 20,000 labels that upload music directly to the site, Last.fm can draw recommendations from one of the most extensive online music catalogues. Learn more about Last.fm at www.last.fm.

About SONY BMG Music Entertainment

SONY BMG Music Entertainment is a global recorded music joint venture with a roster of current artists that includes a broad array of both local artists and international superstars, as well as a vast catalog that comprises some of the most important recordings in history. SONY BMG Music Entertainment is 50% owned by Bertelsmann A.G. and 50% owned by Sony Corporation of America.

First Call Analyst:
FCMN Contact: KJorgensen@cbs.com

Source: CBS Corp.

CONTACT: Christian Ward, PR Manager, Last.fm, christian@last.fm, +44
(0)20 7780 7080, M: +44 (0)7764 2354 011; or John McKay, SONY BMG MUSIC
ENTERTAINMENT, +1-212-833-5520

Web site:

http://www.last.fm/

Company News On-Call:

http://www.prnewswire.com/comp/185007.html

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