Last.fm partnering with Spotify

Through its many iterations, Last.fm's streaming radio has maintained a sizable chunk of the internet's music-listening community. I've had an account since, I think, 2007, and barring the occasional downtime, it's been pretty reliable. The past couple years have been bogged down by increasingly restrictive regulations on free streaming radio (not fun, but I get that they have to pay the bills), and competition from sites like Pandora, but it remains a popular site. I don't know how I feel about this latest partnership with Spotify  though:

The partnership makes sense for both companies. The inability to play entire catalogs of artists -- something that requires onerous negotiations with labels to reach expensive licensing deals -- has long been a missing link of Last.fm's discovery service. And Spotify's ultimate goal, according to founder Daniel Ek, is to become music service that everyone in the world uses to find the music that individual likes before he or she even knows to like it. Nuanced recommendations have been Last.fm's bread and butter for years, before Spotify was founded. 

Though few Last.fm users will complain about the ability to immediately listen to some tracks as soon as they get the urge to hear them, the gap between Last.fm's database of songs and the number of tracks Spotify has licensed may disappoint some in its fervent community of music fanatics. Last.fm has more than 700 million tracks in its records, and Spotify has licenses for more than 20 million globally -- the number of tracks varies by country. (CNET)

If you're not a Spotify user (I'm not), you can still play the in-site radio, but Last.fm's library of tracks has been replaced by YouTube player. I've used it a couple of times, and while my recommended tracks seem a bit more varied, the sound quality is, well, YouTube. And if you listen at work, you might be out of luck if your employer blocks YouTube.