[By Robert Andrews] Music recommendation and social networking site Last.fm is keeping coy about whether it may become an acquisition target. The site, which lets users receive artist recommendations from each other and from a database of their listening habits, now lists a massive 65 million tracks and has first-round funding from Index Ventures. While it includes the same kind of personalized radio service found at Yahoo’s Launch, Last.fm last year launched several new features including an events system that delivers gig listings as well as song suggestions - additions that could soon bring it on to larger sites’ radars.
But Felix Miller, founder and CEO of the London-based outfit, told me: “We are in the middle of our nicest time. There is no reason why we shouldn’t continue what we’re doing. We’re basically in a growth phase - it’s coming along nicely; I don’t think we want to stop that. If anybody is interested in the product, that’s obviously a discussion we are having - but, at the moment, we are just enjoying our lives. If you take venture funding, you have to be acquisitionable - I can’t be sitting here saying we will never be acquired. We either go public or be acquired - or we pay back our funders!”
Wired editor and Long Tail author Chris Anderson is clearly a fan of the site: he suggested to MidemNet delegates that major record companies should start “working” recommendation engines like Last.fm and Pandora to market artists.