The latest on the free-music-on-the-web bandwagon is Coldplay, who have been happily touting their new single as a free online download since exactly 12.15 yesterday.
Photo by crystalspmam on Flickr. Some rights reserved.
Keen to give some weight to their streaming services and related music-buying business model, Last.fm have been keen to point out that the Coldpay figures are a record, exceeding even the most popular track from the Radiohead album that was streamed for free back in October. That notched up 22,000 listens in 12 hours.
Last.fm's figures are based, obviously, on the traffic that is scrobbled among Last.fm users, so these are only a minimum figure. But in 23 hours, there have already been 33,523 listens of Violet Hill - equivalent to 1 listen every 2.4 seconds. That's despite Coldplay's server wobbling about a bit under the weight of requests yesterday.
Last.fm has already claimed a significant 119% rise in the number of click-throughs to Amazon's retail site since it introduced free streaming for the big four music labels.
