CBS acquires last.fm for $280m

Ralph - where in the UK you based? I'm in London

Help you discover new music you might like?

Worse of that, this crazy acquisitions game makes it hard for a startup with a saner plan to succeed. A startup aiming to create a good product and try to survive the old-nice-way charging for it needs to compete with rivals that are not trying at all to be profitable since the goal is to burn money in order to give everything for free and get acquired.

I think this is starting to have serious effects in the quality of web software. An example: if email web clients has a cost, exactly like any other real good, let's say 10$ a year that's ok for everybody, a lot of startups could really enter the market in order to make a better product of gmail (and there are a lot of ways to improve it).

This is happening at all levels. Even worse it's clear that many kind of startups are hardly profitable with advertising. I don't like this system, and I could say it does not seems liberal to me, in the highest sense at least.

They make individuals tell them precisely what music they like. This information is hard to find normally. Sellers like to either target people that will buy what they're selling, or alter what they're selling once they know more about the buyer.

Based on what?