There they go again… A few weeks back, I suggested that Warner Music would be smart to promote Ethan Kaplan, who is VP of Technology for Warner Brothers Records (a Warner Music Group Subsidiary), because he seemed to understand that the real trick was improving the overall experience people had around music, rather than focusing so narrowly on getting paid for every single usage. At the same time, however, the folks up at Warner Music, led by Edgar Bronfman (who claimed Warner would no longer be at war with music fans despite being the guy who started that war) were going out and suing all kinds of services that made the musical experience better.
As a record label, their job should be to get their musicians’ music out into the world in the most convenient way for anyone to enjoy, and to build business models based on that — just as Kaplan suggested. But, instead, Warner Music continues to be about as anti-consumer as it can possibly be. Its latest move is to have Last.fm remove all Warner Music from its service. Last.fm, which is now owned by CBS, is an exceptionally popular online music listening, discovery and e-commerce site. While it did overstate its “free” music service, it still is rather ridiculous that Warner would decide to take all its music and go home.
Warner should recognize that it needs Last.fm a lot more than Last.fm users need it. There’s plenty of music out there, and if they can’t find Warner Music on Last.fm, they’ll find someone else’s music instead.
