Last.fm utterly refutes this story from Techcrunch. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/20/did-lastfm-just-hand-ov..., http://www.last.fm/forum/21713/_/506518/1#f8660996)

To quote:

Hi from Last.fm, I’m one of the founders (and the original founder of audioscrobbler, the music tracking plugin).

I’m not going to write much right now because i’m rather pissed off this article was published, except to say that this is utter nonsense and totally untrue.

As far as I can tell, the author of this article got a “tip” from _one_ person and decided to make a story out of it. Techcrunch is full of shit, film at 11.