Marie B.

Artists, bands, music labels, be aware of the facts that this website allows its users to illegally upload your copyrighted music; and your music is generating a lot of revenue for this company through paid subscriptions and high-end ads and google tracking. You might assume that because a page has been set-up already for your band or label that you will be able to make use of the page, making it a place where your fans can leave "shouts" that are comments about your music. And you will probably assume that you'll have complete control over the images which represent you and your albums. You do not have control over much of anything on lastfm.

Not only does this website allow users to constantly troll the "shoutboxes" of band pages, but they also allow users to get away with uploading "fake" images which usually have nothing to do with you or your albums. As a band page owner I am constantly having to report the same violations of supposed "rules" which this company claims to have in place to respect bands/artists. Every time I ask the ones who run this website a question, or every time I attempt to get users banned from uploading "fake" album cover pics, I am always given quick, extremely rude emails in return--telling me that I, basically, have no rights over the page which represents me and my band. On several occasions I've been told that I stand to have my own user name/account banned if I don't stop "spamming".

Lastfm claims that they are happy to work along side of artists to see that the pages representing them are free of lastfm copyright and rules violations. But this company does not honour these statements. The staff are beyond rude and disrespectful towards artists. Lastfm makes a lot of revenue off of artist pages. Contact them a few times about why they don't allow bands to have more options to control their own pages and you'll find out quickly that this website cares nothing about your opinions or concerns. They are aggressively concerned with making large profits from their website. They are not in the business of caring about whom they are making that profit off of. Artists, bands, music labels should, at the very least, be given, by-law, the choice as to whether they want a lastfm page with their name on it. Period.