The Rumor Mill: LastFM Being Picked Up By Viacom

Posted by John Carney, Feb 20, 2007, 10:40am

Viacom executives are in London negotiating the purchase of LastFM, the London based "online social music network" (read: internet radio station), according to a music business source familiar with the negotiations. The purchase price is said to be $450 million dollars.

Viacom has been reportedly looking to expand its online presence. Reports have claimed that Viacom executives were disappointed that they did not pickup YouTube. LastFM recently signed a deal with Warner Music Group giving the internet radio station the rights to play WMG's entire music catalog. Shortly before YouTube signed its deal to be acquired by Google, the video sharing network signed several rights deals with video content owners. There has been some speculation that LastFM's recent dealmaking might have cleared the way for an acquisition by a larger media or internet company.

Neither Viacom nor LastFM returned calls this morning seeking comment on the rumor.

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Posted in: LastFM, M&A, Rumors

Comments

Posted by Shomari Hines, Feb 20, 2007 11:37AM

These poor guys are still trying to correct the mistake of missing the myspace boat. I hope they know what they're doing with all these web properties they're buying up. They have to make it worth it.

Posted by andrew, Feb 21, 2007 1:41PM

Well Ive been using last.fm for almost a year and overall its great

Posted by Nay Sayer, Feb 22, 2007 1:27AM

Yeah, but how great will it remain once a greed-driven, desperate-for-profit and desperate-for-market-share corporate giant (that doesn't give a flip about the User nor the Music) takes over?

I, for one, hopes last.fm remains 'indie'!

Posted by tabirao, Feb 23, 2007 1:56PM

What 450M?? for what business? is this a joke?
The product is great, the community is nice, but I don't see any business and at this price level, you'd expect one, don't you think?

Posted by John Carney, Feb 23, 2007 1:59PM

Agreed. But see, for instance, YouTube.

Posted by tabirao, Feb 23, 2007 2:02PM

Well... At least with youtube, you can see some kind of business model: If 20% of all videos had ads at first, you can make a lot of money... but are you going to put ads before tunes????

Posted by tabirao, Feb 23, 2007 2:03PM

Well... At least with youtube, you can see some kind of business model: If 20% of all videos had ads at first, you can make a lot of money... but are you going to put ads before tunes????

Look also the audience. Between youtube and last.fm, there is at least an order of magnitude. Everybody uses youtube some way or another whereas last.fm remains a geeky product with a need to download a client software....

Posted by MG, Feb 23, 2007 2:32PM

Never tried Last.FM, but I do use and recommend Pandora. Visual ads on internet radio can work. Pandora is ad-driven, and it must be doing well as its ads have recently moved from niche to mainstream (Chase - does it get more mainstream than Jamie Dimon?).
Alas, Pandora is privately held, because it seems sure to fetch a big number soon.

Posted by Wrongdong, Feb 23, 2007 2:56PM

Oh Dear!! :(
Whoops there goes another rubbertree plant

Posted by yann, Feb 24, 2007 5:30PM

"These poor guys are still trying to correct the mistake of missing the myspace boat. I hope they know what they're doing with all these web properties they're buying up. They have to make it worth it."

i think they're looking for money, nor for a worthy internet.

Posted by Seppi, Feb 24, 2007 6:46PM

$450 million dollars for last.fm? I don't think so. With an active user base of less than 5 million, Viacom would be paying $150 per Last.fm user. Unless you're an online casino, or an Etrade, that's crazy money.

Posted by Seppi, Feb 24, 2007 6:49PM

The YouTube comparison is not valid. Compare the site traffic of YouTube pre-acquisition to that of Last.fm. Not even in the same universe.

Posted by JimmyJackFunk21, Mar 01, 2007 4:54PM

I think Viacom would do better to pick up Mercora. They've got a larger and more diverse catalog, and their stations are just plain better.

Posted by Andy P, Mar 03, 2007 2:48PM

Agree with Shomari on this one. The rumour goes that one of the senior execs at MTV was fired for NOT purchasing Myspace. It is a well known fact that MTV is in free fall at the moment with ratings on the wane and several non starters in the digital domain (Flux, Urge, Overdrive). With Myspace off the cards it is not surprising they have targeted Last FM. The user base might be a fraction of Myspace's but their data set (tags and asscoations, recommendations, listening behaviours etc) alone is a mainstream music corps dream. If they do sell hopefully they will retain some independence as these guys really know what they are doing.... unlike Viacom

Posted by bye bye, Mar 07, 2007 3:16AM

fuck this im out,next thing you know your gonna find yourself with a lawsuit saying you have illegal music in your files and being charged thousands of dollars....

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Posted by martin currams, Apr 25, 2007 4:45AM

Hello,

Please state whether or not there is a takeover attempt of Bausch & Lomb. Its not coming up in a search on dealbreaker.com

Regs and Thks MC

Posted by roshinaya23, May 30, 2007 3:01AM

hi,
my name is not important. I know the founders of last fm , and the person whom came up with the idea and model for 'social browing'. These guys have worked really hard on fine tuning, last.fm
i will not take that from them, i have see them work. but the real brain behind the concept who took it too that moment of cool site to cool business site. Is now working on the next big thng...this will be next evolution. This is to the all the original tem whom started at the begining did the real work,the blue print, this deal there getting now is the begining of the foundations of a corp monster...they had a few bloody noses in the courts on the way up.. now with this they will proberly get the pens and daggrs out.

funny how hackers turn corprate.is this possible?
good luck, good for you

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