Last.fm is adding music videos from YouTube to pages corresponding to individual tracks. A couple of Last.fm–inspired mashups had already begun matching YouTube videos to songs off-site; now CBS’ (NYSE: CBS) $280 million (£137.38 million) acquisition is doing its own syndication from today.
The interesting part is what this means for Last.fm’s own music video efforts. The site in May said it had struck label relationships allowing record companies to upload artists’ videos to the site, aiming to create a “long tail” of “every music video ever made”, deeper than the likes of MTV. At the time, the press release boasted: “The quality of videos on Last.fm will be significantly higher than that of YouTube, with audio encoded at 128kbps compared to YouTube’s 64kbps.” Today, developer Matthew Ogle wrote the YouTube videos “sit alongside our own videos”.
But the YouTube syndication appears dominant already. Amusingly, the feed also includes fans’ concert recordings, amateurs’ musical homages, TV appearances and music vids recorded from TV, complete with channel ident graphics, as well as versions labels might have officially uploaded to YouTube. If any of that sounds like an IP nightmare, just use the “YouTube did it” defence. Anyway, it’s all still in beta and currently only available in the UK.