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There's an interesting story in the Washington Post about CBS's plans for Last.fm.

CBS Interactive's Quincy Smith On Re-Org: 'More CBS Corp. Firepower Focused On Interactive' - washingtonpost.com: "Last.fm: It's almost a year since CBS plunked down $280 million for the UK music recommendation start-up and Smith knows he needs to deliver on all that promise. Last.fm has been growing rapidly on its own and has been given start-up like breathing room but it's time to bring it more into the fold. As we've written here before, Last.fm also needs more U.S. traction. Yes, Smith said, they bought Last.fm in part because of its strong international appeal. 'But it's our job, frankly, as a corporation, to make them more valid in the United States.' To that end, CBS will ramp up on-air promos with 'a lot more call outs' starting in May and, very soon, Last.fm will get its own CMO 'charged with plugging them more into the CBS mainstream.' In late May, CBS will start sending viewers of certain shows to the show's music on Last.fm. 'The downside of Last.fm right now, from my perspective, has nothing to do with the service itself ... the question is how do you blow it up and make it a major media brand in the United State?' Last.fm is working with CBS Interactive's Entertainment unit. As Smith put it, 'CBS has done much less of a job with Last.fm than Last.fm has done with Last.fm.'"

No doubt going mainstream with Last.fm is necessary for CBS to justify their $280 million dollar investment - but for a site like Last.fm, going mainstream is really tricky. Last.fm listeners tend to be highly engaged music fans - whose taste runs to less mainstream music - you are more apt to find artists like Radiohead, Arcade Fire and the Postal Service in the top ten at Last.fm compared to the mainstream pop artists like Mariah Carey and Miley Cyrus that populate the Billboard Pop 100. As Last.fm goes mainstream, there is going to be a culture clash as the mainstream listeners collide with the old-school last.fm listeners. Teenyboppers (and their angry parents) will wonder why Hannah Montana is tagged with 'hardcore death metal' and 'lesbian'. Old-school last.fm listeners will leave for alternative sites as last.fm loses its focus as the best site to discover new indie and alternative music. It's Digg all over again. As Digg went mainstream, it lost its focus on technology - and all the hard-core tech readers went back to slashdot. The problem for Last.fm is that as it goes mainstream, it risks losing much of its core audience - the highly engaged music fan - and this user base of hard core music fans is one of Last.fm's biggest asset.