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Comment by mikedouglas | Hacker News Reader

"It's unrealistic to not expect a huge backlash against a service that's restricting itself to only those markets where they think they might make money."

Which, in one sentence, explains the insanity of the mindset of web startups at the moment. Fortunately, it looks like that's starting to change.

"And trust me, I've already stopped feeding them information. Also, come end of March and I will take my business elsewhere."

Great. Especially if you think Last.fm is wrong about the value of your market, why not start a competitor?

"I don't mind paying for a service. I do mind discrimination and senseless discrimination I mind even more."

There shouldn't be a taboo against saying you don't think last.fm (or any web startup) isn't worth paying for, but I hope you still don't think this is the result of CBSs xenophobia.

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I don't follow the last sentence.

I do think last.fm is worth it, had they 1) made these rules from the get-go; 2) applied them equally and with no discrimination (I think this is where CBS's xenophobia fits in?)

Am I on the right track? If not, please feel free to correct me. :)

If they are able to offer the service for free to some, why is this a bad thing again? I'm Canadian, so am a little bit sad that I won't be enjoying last.fm for free (or, in my case, at all) anymore. However, I'm not mad that others will be able to.

And why is it a bad thing if you offer your service for free at first?

It's bad because the expectation you set with your users is that that service is free.

With last.fm, it was free, but you could upgrade if you wanted to. Until this point in time, it wasn't "free, but only if you're from the right country". Had that been stated in the beginning, they wouldn't have been as successful and probably wouldn't have been acquired by the CBS.

They basically did the worst thing possible. They've collected user data, which they needed for their recommendation engine. They got users to fill out information about the bands whose music was on the site. Now, they're cashing in.

As DHH and 37signals and various other people have said: Don't be afraid to charge for your product.

They screwed up and now they will face the wrath of the community.

Wait, so you would've been willing to pay for the product originally (which, as you mentioned, would've collected less data and therefore be less useful than todays Last.fm), but you wouldn't be willing to pay for the more useful version available today?

For all that information, you got personal statistics (which will still be free) and free radio for seven years.

They're a business, it is there _responsibility_ to cash in. I'd much rather have it available for a price, than not available because people ran it into the ground.

What I'm saying is that the expectation that you, as a user, will have to pay for the service at some point in the future, but only if you don't happen to live in their preferred countries, was not set at launch of the service. If that expectation had been set, of course it would have amounted to a less useful service.

This is tantamount to a bait-and-switch, only you as a user provided the bait. All I'm arguing here for is transparency. None of this was needed had they been transparent. It would have also helped if they asked the community for feedback.

Now, the admins basically come off as assholes who have used the community and their volunteer contributions to make a coin. Making money isn't the problem. How they've gone about doing it is.

By the way, take a look at the comments again. No one from last.fm has responded to the users in the last 5 hours and the last comment was no better than a canned reply.

It's terrible customer service. Even if I weren't affected, I'd consider removing my data and getting off the service. Who's to say they won't do it to US, UK and German users next?

I think it is presumptuous to assume that they new they would have to adopt this business model 7 years ago.

Maybe it is. Putting aside the fact that this is a major change in the business model, the admins still have not responded to the furor.

They gave a 5 day notice, they haven't put it on Last.fm's home page and they haven't assuaged users' fears. That is still a terrible way to treat the community who has basically provided the information the service needed in order to be as good as it is.

I don't think that that is presumptuous to expect of them.

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