LesFM: CBS alerted the media of a major announcement regarding Lastfm.com but the announcement lacked major majorness

BY SDH When CBS acquired social networking music website LastFM.com many were confused and wondered what in the world CBS planned to do with their new trophy web property. On January 22nd CBS alerted the media that they would be making an announcement regarding the site. Yesterday, CBS announced that LastFM will now be a free on-demand music streaming portal, much like Yahoo! Music in many ways but with an annoying catch. See CBS Corp CEO Les Moonves and CBS Interactive head Quincy Smith play up the new LastFM.com as an anytime anywhere kind of music portal, but how can they say users can listen to any song on their computers whenever they wanted, but up to 3 times? Doesn't the last part of that statement contradict the first part? Well, until they launch their new subscription based access, that's the annoying limitations potential takers will have to deal with due to the fact that CBS is now in bed with the major labels and has agreed to pay artists whose songs get played, so this is clearly a tactic to control pay outs. Continue... There is nothing ground breaking about the new direction of LastFM.com. It’s now an ad soon to be subscription driven business that in no way helps to spread CBS's content. It will not "give a lift to the idea that music through the Internet can be similar to radio — free and supported by advertising — yet give users a choice of what they want to listen to" Because Yahoo! Music is, and has been doing something like this for years. If CBS really wanted to make a mark they should have probably transformed LastFM.com into a one stop portal where people can go and listen to any CBS Radio station on the web by simply clicking to tune in or making this new free music model a mobile only service. If you're content driven media company and you're looking to make acquisitions on the web, it's smart to grab something that can be used to spread your content even more to the masses. We think LastFM was an impulse buy and may (and we use the word “May” very loosely) end up doing well for CBS, but the fact still remains that you won't be able to stream episodes of "Big Brother" "Kid Nation" or “CSI" on it. We’re still waiting to see what happens with what we think was another impulse buy, Wallstrip.com. If you ask us, CBS is pimping themselves out to the record labels only to give them (the record labels) yet another platform to spread their content. CBS already made the dumb move of re-entering the very frail music business when it re-launched CBS Records. Now they're greasing the already slimy palms of record execs. On another note, is Les Moonves rocking a vicious comb-over in the image above?