Last.fm

Last.fm, Spotify, the UK's Absolute Radio, and YouTube are among the charter services joining the IAB's new Audio Council to find ways to increase value for audio ads.

The council will include consumer brands but also audio creative specialists, market researchers, and advertising experts.

"The newly formed council will explore how to further educate brands of the benefits and value of digital audio advertising along with helping audio firms develop their business models," reports TheDrum.com here.

Dozens of top radio and online audio executives from across Europe will be converging in Belgium in less than six weeks for the second annual RAIN Summit Europe, to be held on Thursday, May 23rd at the stylish Hotel BLOOM! in Brussels.

As with other RAIN Summit events such as last week's successful RAIN Summit West in Las Vegas (more coverage here and here), web radio professionals will gather to discuss all facets of Internet radio and online audio, participating in panel discussions and presentations and advancing the development of the business of online audio across Europe.

Topics on the agenda will range from business to technology to programming and include best practices for measurement of online audio, multiplatform content distribution, mobile streaming, sales strategies, and programming for audience growth.

Presentations will be given by James Cridland of Media UK, David Deslandes of Deezer, and Simon Gooch of SBS Radio Sweden/RadioPlay.

Other confirmed speakers already include an impressive mix of Internet radio and online audio executives, including:

• Ali Abhary, CEO, Spectrum Medya, Turkey
• Jan-Willem Bruggenwirth, Managing Director, 538.nl, The Netherlands
• Matthew Carver, Radio Coordinator, EGTA, Belgium
• Ben Drury, Founder/CEO, 7Digital, U.K.
• Hakan Kostepen, Executive Director, Product Strategy & Innovation, Panasonic, U.S.
• Jan Poelmann, RMS, Germany
• Robert Proctor, CEO, Audioboo, U.K.
• Alain Reyes, Head Manager, NRJ, France
• Patrick Roger, VP/Global Sales & Marketing, Adswizz, France
• Jöel Ronez, Director of New Media, RadioFrance, France
• Christian Schalt, General Manager, rs2 and KISS FM (Berlin), Germany
• Kjarten Slette, Head of Music, WiMPmusic, Norway
• Holger Weiss, CEO, Aupeo, Germany
• Steve Whilton, Director of Product, Last.fm, U.K

More speakers will be announced regularly in RAIN in upcoming days. Panel descriptions are available here.

Registration is limited for this event (last year's gathering in Berlin sold out). You can register for the event using either Eventbrite or Amiando.

In a new round-up of various music platforms' marketing effectiveness, Pandora topped competitors like Spotify, Last.fm, Deezer, and Grooveshark. Given Pandora's long lead in audience size over the other services, this is probably little surprise.

"While they do have an unfair advantage (they’ve been around for 13 years, have ~1,000 employees and $56.3m funding) it’s worth pointing out that they’re far from having a monopoly," wrote Marcus Taylor, director of online marketing firm VentureHarbour. "Spotify, Last.fm, Deezer and Grooveshark all give Pandora a serious run for their money."

In categories Social Media, Brand Awareness, Website Traffic / SEO, and (as mentioned) Number of Users, Pandora came out on top. For in Online PR category, however, Pandora's streak ends at the hands of Last.fm (with Spotify in second place).

Taylor wrote, "Last.fm receives an impressive amount of search engine traffic to their website, which appears to be attributed to building a vast quantity of backlinks and the creation of 48 million or so user generated pages."

Read about Taylor's sources and other findings in Hypebot here.

Radio "futurologist" James Cridland blogs today that Last.fm's "scrobbling" can offer radio great insight in to current trends in music.

The cornerstone of the Last.fm service is the "audio scrobbling" -- the collection of users' music listening details (from various sources) that enables Last.fm to see and understand what's popular and to whom -- "a goldmine for music programmers."

Cridland suggests using Last.fm data to see which artists are trending with listeners, and "if you scrobble your station into it, it'll also show you songs you're not playing but should be." Read Cridland's blog here.

CBS Interactive-owned music service Last.fm has announced it will shut down its online radio service in all but eight countries, "due to licensing restrictions."

While U.S., UK, and German listeners will still be able to use the Last.fm radio service free via the website, radio via the Last.fm desktop application in those nations will become solely a subscription-based service (ad-supported free radio via apps had been available to users in those countries). Mobile access to Last.fm radio (since April 2011) has been subscription-only, and will remain so.

Elsewhere in the world, Last.fm's radio service has been subscription-only since 2009. It will remain so for Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and Brazil. But elsewhere, Last.fm online radio will entirely cease on January 15.

The cost of licensing copyright sound recordings has always been, and continues to be, inhibitive to online music companies in the U.S. and elsewhere.

2012 marked the tenth anniversary of Last.fm's founding. It was purchased by CBS in 2007, and remains based in England.

Last.fm also announced an upcoming revamped desktop client.

Last.fm features a music recommender system called "Audioscrobbler," which compiles details of users' music habits ("scrobbling") -- on Internet radio stations, local files, or portable devices -- and builds a detailed profile of each user's musical tastes. It's this database that powers Last.fm's music recommendation capability.

Read the Last.fm announcement here.

CBS Interactive's Last.fm has appointed Chris Price as Head of Music.

Price most recently served as Director/Music Programming for MTV in the UK. He's also spent time with BBC Radio 1, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group.

All Access has more coverage here.