CBS Corporation has acquired Last.fm for $280 million dollars in cash. Last.fm is a community-based music discovery social network–with an estimated 15 million users in more than 200 countries worldwide.
As part of the acquisition, the Last.fm management team, including the founders Felix Miller, Martin Stiksel and Richard Jones, will continue to run the the Last.fm network. They will work with the appropriate CBS divisions to apply their community-building and technology expertise to extend CBS businesses online, as well as within the CBS mobile divisions.
Founded in 2002, Last.fm is a social networking site that creates communities around music. Last.fm attempts to bring listeners, as well as artists and music together. Last.fm has “scrobbling” technology and a social recommendation engine. Last.fm builds a profile of each user’s musical tastes and leverages each user’s song list to make personalized recommendations, attempting to connect users who share similar tastes in music. Last.fm also provides custom radio streams and other music related community features.
Last.fm has partnership agreements in place with many major music labels.
Last.fm received funding from Index Ventures as well as other individual investors like Stefan Glaenzer, Reid Hoffman, and Joi Ito.
There are many other sites talking today about this CBS / Last.fm acquisition:
WOW: CBS Acquires Last.fm for $280 Million
BREAKING: CBS Acquires Last.fm for $280 million
CBS Acquires Last.fm for $280m
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CBS snaps up Last.fm
Last FM Bought by CBS