Album and Track Purchases by Users of Social Music Network Grow 119% After Launch of Free-On-Demand Service

NEW YORK and LONDON, April 9 /PRNewswire/ -- Last.fm announced today that its free-on-demand music service has had a direct and positive impact on the music purchases of its users. Since the service launched in January, overall CD and download sales through Last.fm's partnership with Amazon.com have experienced a 119% increase.

Alongside an increase in visitors to Last.fm -- which has seen the community grow massively since the site started offering free access to its music catalogue in January -- this boost is also fueled by existing users purchasing 66% more albums and tracks than they did prior to the launch of free-on-demand.

According to Martin Stiksel, Last.fm Co-Founder, this demonstrates that giving users free access to streaming songs encourages music purchasing. "In just over two months it's become clear that people will buy CDs and downloads if they get access to the kind of service we offer. No one else can give music fans this amount of music for free -- but more importantly also drive their discovery, as we do through our unique recommendation engine. That's why people are sticking around on Last.fm -- minutes spent on site are up 118% month-on-month -- and discovering new music to listen to and buy."

Last.fm has affiliate deals with partners including iTunes, Amazon and 7Digital, allowing users to buy CDs and downloads from a catalogue that includes all four major labels and thousands of independent labels and artists. Affiliate links on the site's music players allow users to click through from any song they're listening to and buy individual tracks or full albums from any of those partners.

Since launching free-on-demand in January -- a service which currently offers free access to over five million tracks for full-length streaming -- Last.fm has become the fastest growing free music Web site in the U.S.