big news about last.fm
There are lots of news stories about our favorite social music recommender last.fm. First, they acquired rights to stream all 800,000 tracks from the IODA catalog. Second - the rumor mill is churning about Viacom trying to purchase last.fm with a target purchase price of $450 million. But for the really big news, one has to read between the lines.
If you are a regular reader of the MIR Research blog, you'll notice that Elias Pampalk has been talking about social tagging and the wisdom of the crowds vs. the algorithmic approaches used in academic research. It seems that Elias has got the tag religion. Combine that with this post Elias makes in his personal blog about his unnamed new job in London - and it is not hard to guess that Last.fm may be adding another top-notch MIR researcher to their staff. That's great news for Last.fm - Elias is smart, very passionate about music and music discovery, and shares my love for interesting and engaging interfaces to music. Last.fm would do well, to add Elias to the team. Still, this is just a rumor ... waiting for Elias to confirm or deny.
Update: Elias confirms.