Last.fm, the popular social music network, has been acquired by CBS for $280 million in cash.

The UK-based music site has been around for about 5 years, and has over 15 million active users in more than 200 countries. Last.fm's leadership will remain in place and the website will retain it's separate identity.

"This move will really support us to get every track ever recorded and every music video ever made onto Last.fm," said Last.fm founding member Martin Stiksel. "With a strong partner like CBS, this is now within our reach." 

"Last.fm is one of the fastest growing online communities out there," said CBS president and CEO Leslie Moonves. "Their demographics also play perfectly to CBS's goal to attract younger viewers and listeners across our businesses."

This represents the largest Web 2.0 acquisition yet. But beyond that, this is a strong indication as to how fast things are moving lately. The lines of "distribution" are being blurred.

[BBC News via ValleyWag] 

Part two of Slacker's three prong attack on digital radio has just arrived: Slacker Desktop Radio.

Slacker Desktop Radio goes a step further than its Web-based counterpart, with features like a mini-player, visualizations, larger album art and playlists. Eventually, when the Slacker Portable gets released, Slacker Desktop Radio will sync your custom channels to the device.

The Slacker Portable, Slacker Desktop Radio, and Slacker web-app will all work together, updating each other with your custom preferences as you move from one to the other.

There's a couple downsides of course, one being that the application is still in beta and as such is pretty temperamental (I had trouble running it at the time of writing this). Also there's no iTunes integration and no support for the Mac (yet). But it's still very early, so hopefully all of that will change.

Once the Slacker Portable, their Premium Radio service and the Slacker Satellite Car Kit is available, many people may be singing an entirely different tune.

[Slacker Desktop Radio via TechCrunch] 

Earlier this year Microsoft and Ford unveiled Sync, an in-car communications and entertainment system that is expected to be a factory-installed option for various 2008 model year vehicles.

This patent however details a "car stereo including a docking station into which an off-the-shelf handheld computer can be docked," and additionally, it hints towards support for a multitude of devices. The stereo would also include a memory system that will "maintain a record its current state when it is undocked from a particular type of appliance," so when you plug back in, everything starts up where you left off.

Not to be limited by digital audio players, the patent also allows for "another interface form [that] may allow the user to select from resources such as GPS, internet, a printer over USB, etc."

[View Patent (PDF) via Engadget] 

There's another merger going on in the ever popular audio-over-satellite market, with Muzak and DMX looking to tie the knot.

And just like our own Sirius-XM merger, the DOJ has issued a "Second Request" under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act. Both companies submitted an HSR filing to the DOJ back in April, asking for antitrust regulators to give the go-ahead for the merger.

If merged, the newly formed entity would be packaged and sold to an unnamed third party.

"We believe the additional information requested will serve to confirm that a merger of the two companies will not adversely affect competition, will result in significant synergies for the combined companies, and will benefit our customers," a Muzak spokesperson said.

With both DMX-Muzak and Sirius-XM looking to merge, you have to wonder whether regulators are questioning the strength that satellite-based companies possess, versus their earth-bound competitors.

[Digital Music News]
Thanks Tim!

A recent Bridge Ratings study took a look at the competitive media landscape and the usage of the U.S. population. The results are pretty interesting...

The survey found that about 450,000 people say they listen to HD Radio daily.

Now, 57 million Americans listen to some form of Internet radio in a typical week, according to the study. Compare this to Sirius and XM, who combined pull in nearly 15 million subscribers.

Still, terrestrial radio continues to dominate, and MP3 players also hold a massive amount of earshare. An amazing 280 million Americans listen to terrestrial radio in an average week. While MP3 players - yes, including the iPod - reach 90 million Americans.

So let's break this down in percentages:

• HD Radio: 0.0015% of the U.S. population
  
• Satellite Radio: 4.8% of the U.S. population
• Internet Radio: 21% of the U.S. population
• MP3 Players: 30.4% of the U.S. population
• Terrestrial Radio: 93.7% of the U.S. population

[Bridge Ratings]

Sony has stepped into the HD Radio arena now with the XDR-S3HD tabletop radio and the XT-100HD mobile tuner.

The Sony XDR-S3HD tabletop targets the retro-chic crowd with a large back-lit blue LCD display set in a mesh-covered front panel and wrapped in a cherry wood finish. Along with HD Radio support, the XDR-S3HD also sports MP3 playback (through an auxiliary cable), and 20 presets for either the AM/FM band.

Expect to see the XDR-S3HD in stores in July for about $200.

Then there's the Sony XT-100HD, which is a hideaway mobile tuner that connects through the Sony head unit's bus interface.

On top enabling your car to receive HD Radio, the unit will pump any available PAD data to the headunit. Also expect to see the XT-100HD available in July, running around $100. 

Now this is truly amusing. Clear Channel Radio Chief Executive John Hogan, in an interview with Forbes, said that there "certainly isn't much variety" in satellite radio's music programming.

The strikingly ironic comments came about from a question about satellite radio's influence on Clear Channel's programming decisions.

"Satellite actually has not influenced us at all--consumers have," Hogan said. "What you're hearing on our radio stations and hearing and seeing on our Web sites is really a reflection of consumers, and not of a competitor."

But of course, this impartial attitude quickly disappeared when John Hogan started describing what it is that satellite radio - particularly XM - offers listeners:

"We currently program ... [10] radio stations on XM, that's one of our distribution platforms. I think that the stations we're programming on XM are far and away the best programmed and the best produced," said the Clear Channel Radio chief. "I'm sort of underwhelmed by satellite. I think what they have is a lot of really interesting channel titles. But when you listen to them, there's not much there."

"There certainly isn't much variety, and what I think is really the essence of radio--that is, what is between the records--is really pretty lame."

(and cue laughter... now) 

[Forbes]

Pandora isn't just going the mobile audio route, they're also going the digital audio player route. They've just pre-announced an upcoming Wifi device to be built by SanDisk, and powered by none-other than Zing.

Zing of course, debuted their Wifi technology with the Sirius Stiletto. They then followed suit with the Sansa Connect (which looks hotter in person than the photos give justice to).

So the Zing + SanDisk + Pandora combination shouldn't come as much of a surprise. Especially when Pandora founder Tim Westergren is dropping not-so-subtle hints about it.

Few other details were revealed about the player (you know, things like disk space and battery life). But there's several pics for us to drool over while we wait.

While WiFi is ubiquitous, it's not always available. If the Pandora player sports enough storage space, they could cache several songs in advance while you don't have signal. Either way, I really hope that XM and Sirius raise an eyebrow to this. And remember... Slacker is coming.

[TechCrunch and Zatz Not Funny] 

Pandora has just announced several new features and ways to listen to Pandora's personalized Internet radio. One of the key announcements is their new partnership with Sprint, which marks as Pandora's first mobile deal.

Sprint subscribers can now listen to Pandora on select mobile phones using a pre-installed player or downloaded software. Just point your Sprint browser to Pandora.com to initiate the download.

The Pandora service on Sprint is free for the first 30-days, afterwhich it's available for $3/month (on top of your Sprint Power Vision data plan). This subscription also removes the ads on the newly redesigned Pandora.com.

Mobile audio solutions like this pose a serious threat to the satellite radio industry. Yes, both Sirius and XM have had deals with mobile providers in place for quite some time, but inherently these services compete with satellite radio's own core service. Since this is Pandora's first un-tethered solution, you can bet that there will be quite a bit more interest from their 6.9 million registered userbase. And that ain't good news.

[via TechCrunch]

The recent advertising campaign by Mercury that prominently promotes a free 3-years of Sirius Satellite Radio, is being called into question - by Jacobs Media.

Jacobs Media, of course, is a terrestrial radio supported organization. But let's ignore that.

The whole reason why the campaign is being questioned, is because Jacobs own research shows that MP3 player integration and GPS navigation are more popular new car features than satellite radio. Now, the research was based off of a survey that polled "Rockers" specifically, which may (or may not) be Mecury's target audience. But let's ignore that.


Using this research, we see that 16% of respondents are "very interested" in seeing satellite radio in their next vehicle. Compare this to the 19% of respondents "very interested" in GPS navigation - and the relative costs incurred between satellite radio and GPS nav - and you can figure out exactly why Mercury is promoting Sirius instead. (Hint: $195 vs. $2,295) But let's ignore that too.

Instead, let's question whether Fred Jacobs would be taking the same accusing tone (hinting that partnerships like this artificially inflate satellite radio's subscriber numbers) if the promotion was for... oh I don't know, maybe HD Radio instead? Would Jacobs would take issue with Ford's partnership with Sirius, if it weren't for the Big Three automakers saying that there's no interest in HD Radio? Nah, of course not.

Let's just ignore all that.

[Jacobs Media Blog]