Grammys 2013: That dress order in full

Let's take a closer look at the peekaboo dress ban.

It's worth noting that this comes from CBS - the broadcaster - rather than the Grammys organisers themselves:

Date:
February 5, 2013, 10:39:56 PM EST

Subject: 55th GRAMMYS: Standard And Practice Wardrobe Advisory

kindly confirm receipt of s&p standards

***GRAMMYS 2013***

CBS Program Practices advises that all talent appearing on camera please adhere to Network policy concerning wardrobe.

Please be sure that buttocks and female breasts are adequately covered. Thong type costumes are problematic.

Please avoid exposing bare fleshy under curves of the buttocks and buttock crack.

Bare sides or under curvature of the breasts is also problematic.

Please avoid sheer see-through clothing that could possibly expose female breast nipples.

Please be sure the genital region is adequately covered so that there is no visible “puffy” bare skin exposure.

Please avoid commercial identification of actual brand name products on T-shirts.

Foreign language on wardrobe will need to be cleared.

OBSCENITY OR PARTIALLY SEEN OBSCENITY ON WARDROBE IS UNACCEPTABLE FOR BROADCAST.

This as well, pertains to audience members that appear on camera.

Finally, The Network requests that any organized cause visibly spelled out on talent’s wardrobe be avoided.

This would include lapel pins or any other form of accessory.

The stipulation that it's only female breasts that need to be "adequately" covered is good news for Mumford And Sons, who've been up late every night this week putting sequins on their low-cut bikini tops.

What's wonderful about this isn't that CBS felt it was an appropriate intervention in the first place, but that they felt the need to go into such poetic detail.

Puffy Genital Skin. Is that even a thing? Is toned genital skin acceptable?How far from the epicentre do we get before the skin can safely be seen? And does the level network approved puffiness increase or decrease with distance from sexual organs? It's surprising that such a tightly-worded missive fails to provide some sort of measurement assistance.

The suspicion is that this is less about CBS panicking about a stray boob bouncing in the background of an Ed Sheeran performance, and more about trying to make the red carpet less of a spectacle.

The Red Carpet - or hours of unbroken coverage of people just out the shower walking towards a theatre - is carried by cable outfits like E! and TV Guide, rather than CBS. Would it be that CBS is trying to stop its seventeen hour Grammy telecast being edged out of the next day's media coverage by pages and pages of photos of Jennifer Lopez where you can, like, see her underboob.

The last line of the email, though, is the real stinker. Not even a lapel pin or a wristband reflecting something you believe in?

One thing to tell people to put their junk away. Is CBS really in a position to tell people to make their sure their consciences don't peek out from under their shirts, too?

Whatever happened to that Fred Durst sitcom, then?

When this image of Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan popped up this week, there was just one thought:

That thought was: 'who knew there was a politician who'd base his look on Fred Durst?'

That led to another thought: whatever happened to Fred Durst's sitcom? It was announced to much excitement - alright, to a sea of snark - this time last year. And yet there's no sign of it in the 2012-13 schedules. There's not even a suggestion anywhere that a pilot even got made, much less that there was enough of a project to be dropped.

Mind you, ABC have got a show lined up called How To Live With Your Parents For The Rest Of Your Life, so maybe CBS just said 'one of the other networks is doing something similar to the sitcom based on you, Fred' and moved along.

So what is Fred up to these days? Popping up at celebrity golf matches for Christian charities.

Fred Durst: The Bill Cosby of our days

The sudden resurgence of comedy on US Network television has created a crisis, as there aren't enough funny people to go round. Things are so bad CBS is even toying with giving Fred Durst a sitcom.

Yes, Fred Durst.

How do you take a man who is only ever unintentionally hilarious and make a sitcom from him?

In the half-hour project, currently known as "Douchebag", Durst will star as a "rock legend" trying to juggle his family and his famous-person lifestyle.

I suppose at least he's not doing the usual thing and just playing himself then, although in this case that might be more appealing. A half hour about an elderly bloke who dresses like he's 13 and hasn't noticed that he's not even a famous name in his own genre any more could have legs. Otherwise, isn't this just the ill-fated Harry Enfield adaptation of Private Eye's Celeb strip, but without even the saving grace of Harry Enfield?

CBS radio boss states obvious, but still needs saying

Dan Mason heads up CBS' radio division, and as such is king of 130 stations. He's just told his team to do what should be obvious:

It would seem one of the basic tasks of any disk jockey: tell listeners the name of the song they just heard. But last week the head of a major radio company felt compelled to instruct its programmers to start identifying more of the songs played on the air, by title and artist name.

The record labels are delighted, as well they should be. Mason admits that his new policy is effectively putting right a jaunt up a research-led blind alley:

In an interview, Mr. Mason explained that at some indeterminate point in history — he and other radio veterans place it at the mid-1980s — song identification began to vanish from the air as programmers struggled to squeeze out anything considered “clutter.”

“You were always conscious about the amount of talk you would put on,” he said. “But the truth is that people tune in and tune out, and it was probably underestimated at the time how much people really wanted that information.”

It's a first step toward putting right a lot of pisspoor decisions taken by heads of radio companies. Let's hope Mason has some more plans, and for now, embrace the return of the back announcement to American radio.

CNet targetted in LimeWire suit

Alki David, a filmmaker with more beef than a Texan rancher, has launched a class action lawsuit against CNet. He's looking for musicians and other filmmakers to join in to claim damages after CNet distributed Limewire software.

I know what you're thinking - aren't any damages already being pursued through the lawsuit against Limewire? Yes.

There's a plodding twenty minute video in which David churns slowly through his case, like a man who assumes his audience might not be actually awake, but the key bit is his claim that there's "many billions of dollars" to be shared. (Presumably Alki is expecting CBS to bankrupt itself in any judgement?)

David is convinced, or has convinced himself, that CNet's distribution of LimeWire was with "malicious intent". He drags in a lot of other irrelevances to his case, straighfacedly suggesting that showing someone how to strip DRM from a track is "teaching people to steal".

In a bid to perk up the video, he's cut in some images of angry skeletons - it doesn't really perk the video up.

By about 12 minutes, he's on to Bittorrent, and claiming "the liability in this is into the many trillions of dollars". Yes, you'll recall that the music industry used to be worth several trillions before filesharing was invented.

About 16 minutes in, he's trying again to liven up his video by doing what appears to be a parody of the Victor Kiam adverts. That's okay, though - that's covered by fair use.

After that, though, comes the real reason for this: David's long-running argument with CBS over his Film.On service. It's all quite extraordinary.

Thumbs Aloft meets the Great Big Eye

David Letterman played host to Paul McCartney last night. This is considered to be something of a coup, and while you can see it might be a bit more interesting than Jamie Cullum on Michael Parkinson, there's still a bit of me that wants to check it wasn't a rebroadcast of programming from the day the Apollo guys headed off for the moon.

Anyway, if Paul McCartney is your sort of thing, you'll be delighted to hear that you can watch an extended Macca on Letterman set on the CBS site. Even if you're not in America.

CBS denies Techcrunch claims, in a rather precise manner

Following Techcrunch's repeating of claims that Last FM and CBS might be sharing user data with record labels, CBS have joined Last FM in issuing a very carefully-worded denial:

“Both CBS and the RIAA have already stated quite clearly, for the record, that absolutely no individual user or listener information was supplied to the RIAA by Last.fm or any division of CBS Corporation in the past, nor do we plan to do so in the future. The story posted by the Web site was based on an unnamed tipster. No inquiry was made to CBS or Last.fm about the veracity of the anonymous source. Those who consult such blogs should be aware of the standard by which such postings are sourced and published.”

Yes, that's telling them, CBS - don't trust blogs and bloggers. Stick to reliable sources like CBS News, who would never run a dubious story without first checking its veracity a million times. Unless, you know, it was a supposed memo about George Bush's military record.

So, we're now in a situation with two organisations refusing to back down on their sides, although CBS and LastFM seem to be denying something slightly different from what Techcrunch are claiming; Techcrunch, though, making their allegation into an ever-widening catchall blanket which could end up with "aah, Last FM let a record label look at their website" at this rate.

If the Techcrunch story is true, it's bloody important. But if they can't stack it up any more soundly than redacted emails from anonymous tipsters, they might need to let it drop.

Techcrunch claim again: "CBS are shovelling Scrobble data to RIAA"

You'll recall the spat a few weeks back when Techcrunch claimed that Last FM user data was being passed to the RIAA. Last FM described Techcrunch as being "full of shit".

And, indeed, Techcrunch have now conceded their story was wrong. In one detail:

Last.fm didn’t hand user data over to the RIAA. According to our source, it was their parent company, CBS, that did it. That corresponds to what our original source said in conversations we had after our initial post and before CBS lawyers became involved. But we didn’t want to update until we had an independent source for that information, too.

Here’s what we believe happened: CBS requested user data from Last.fm, including user name and IP address. CBS wanted the data to comply with a RIAA request but told Last.fm the data was going to be used for “internal use only.” It was only after the data was sent to CBS that Last.fm discovered the real reason for the request. Last.fm staffers were outraged, say our sources, but the data had already been sent to the RIAA.

The reason CBS were happy to pass the data was, according to Techcrunch's original source, fear:

We provided the data to the RIAA yesterday because we know from experience that they can negatively impact our streaming rates with publishers.

That source was apparently sacked by CBS for the original leak.

Last FM have again issued a denial. Russ Garrett at Last FM says it couldn't have happened without his say-so:

The exact nature of the data that was allegedly transferred is still not clear. It’s implied that the data linked scrobbles to IP addresses. That particular data is controlled tightly inside Last.fm and is only stored for a short period of time. Any request for such data would have to be approved by myself first. The suggestion that CBS’s ops team provided this data is just not possible - Last.fm operates as a separate entity and their operations staff do not have access to our system.

As Arrington points out, transferring personally identifiable data (i.e. IP addresses) from the UK to the US is against data protection laws. We wouldn’t risk a lawsuit to pander to the RIAA’s requests.

If you read the response conspiracy-theorist close, you'd be struck that Garrett doesn't ever deny that anyone asked for the data, just that such requests have never been granted - which may or may not mean anything, but you'd have thought in a situation like this 'nobody has asked for anything, nothing has been given' would be the obvious response.

Last FM believe that the stories are as a result of "someone" slandering them. It doesn't suggest whom.

Supreme Court to inspect Janet Jackson's breasts

It lasted only three sixteenths of a second, and yet, five years on, we're still not at the end of the Janet Jackson nipple slip. Now, the Supreme Court is going to inspect the appeal court's rejection of the ridiculous fine that CBS was hit with after a slice of nipple fluttered across the TV screens during Superbowl 2004.

Ofcom might sometimes attach itself to the passing mob, but at least it manages to come to its conclusions, however poor, fairly quickly.

Last FM summons whine: Switches off services

For a moment, our gaze is directed away from PRS attacks on Google to the trouble over at Last FM this morning, as the service owners take steps to make it less useful to as many people as possible.

In what we're taking as the largest marketing campaign yet embarked upon on behalf of Spotify, Last FM has thrown up a pay wall around most of its music streams. If you're in Germany, the US or the UK, you can still stream music for free; elsewhere - I haven't had a chance to consult a Gazetteer, but I believe that's 'elsewhere' as in 'nearly all the world' - you'll have to hand over EUR3 a month to hear Last FM radio.

Sorry, I'll read that again: outside those three countries, you'll go elsewhere for your music.

The reason for the paywall is to try and summon some money to pay royalties and return some cash to owners CBS. It's almost as if everyone involved has this far been working on a mistaken assumption of what the financial value of recorded music is online, and is trying to shape their service to match that, rather than finding out where the value point is and building around that. Why does that sound familiar?

But it's not just by closing out the French, the Candians, the French Canadians, the good people of the Gabon and the Leeward Islanders by which Last FM is attempting to scupper itself. Oh, no. Last FM isn't merely getting in the bath with an electric toaster, it's going to take two catering size jars of paracetamol, washed down with a bottle of whisky:

Last.fm has said that all non-official mobile clients will be banned. This isn't going over well.

The change comes with a new developer API that will actually make things much easier for other developers, who've had to rely on a few undocumented calls up until now. Current licensing agreements with labels—who Last.fm is in no position to alienate—prohibit mobile streaming, though the company's official mobile radio apps—right now just on the iPhone and Android—will still work fine.

Oh, yes. People love the stuff we do so much they build services to help us reach new audiences and move across platforms. Let's stop that happening, then.

Now, of course, there would be objections from the labels - who have never seen a digital development they didn't want blocked by an act of Congress - but surely Last FM could try and win them round? And, if they're really so keen to have 'official' apps for mobile, why not talk to the unofficial guys and see if they can't be brought in-house, or at least given a blessing?

Instead, plugs are pulled. Services are yanked. And a happy web community are happy no more:

That really sucks
I renewed my subscription (I have been a subscriber for a few years) but now regret it as I will no longer be able to listen to the radios in my usual music player, so I paid for nothing.
[...]
How sad and dissappointing
You are throwing to the waste bin thousand of free development hours (including many of my own) that directly benefited Last.fm.

I'm sorry that it has come to this. Don't forget that the main value of Last.fm has been created by its users scrobbling songs, writing the wiki, uploading music, writing software...
[...]
Let me tell you something
The Future of Last.fm is... well, you just have no future. You should be ashamed of this move. You are what you are because of the community (artists, listeners, developers...) and these things are against the community. It's kind of suicidal. You're dead.
R.I.P. Last FM

P.S.
Russ said: Scrobbling will always be free.
Well, it would be surrealistic to charge us for giving you our data... that's what feeds last.fm

Still, I'm sure that Last FM's current userbase will sit tight, and wait until they're allowed to listen to music on their "mobile devices". I'm sure. The internet user base is known for its patience.

Incidentally, tucked in the debate is how, precisely, Last FM defines a mobile device. This is Last FM staffer Russ's response to a question about that:

Re: Re: The Future of Last.fm Radio APIs

achitnis said:
What defines a "mobile phone" in this case? What about, say, a Nokia N810, which is an Internet tablet/MID, NOT A PHONE. Would this be barred from using the API in an application such as Vagalume to stream music? What about dedicated internet radios? These are all "portable" devices that are not phones, but are certainly mobile.

The N810 doesn't connect to a cellular data network, so it's not a phone.

So, that's the important distinction, is it? So... an iPod Touch connects via WiFI - presumably the apps are fine there, then; while the same app running on the same operating system on an iPhone suddenly becomes invalid because there's an extra antennae in the back of the device? When was this phone/not phone distinction made, precisely? 1803? If you unplug your laptop from an ethernet connection and stick in a 3 dongle, should you stop using Last FM as you're now connecting via a cellular network?

It would be funny if the internet wasn't going to lose a valuable, lovely resource as a result of it all.

Nirvana untouched: Plans to work Cobain's corpse flops

Back in 2006, Courtney Love did a deal bringing in a company called Primary Wave Music Publishing to work on the Nirvana back catalogue. They paid her fifty million dollars, with the plan of using the songs to soundtrack adverts and video games.

It hasn't been a staggering success, with the company having managed to scrape a return of a little under two and a half million.

Why so? Partly because it's Nirvana - you're not really going to get that many supermarket chains lining up to use Polly as a soundtrack for their ad spots, are you?

And partly - perhaps more so - because Primary Wave only controlled 50% of the catalogue; the other 50% was controlled by Love and the rest of the band:

A source told Portfolio that one deal to license a number of NIRVANA songs for a special episode of "CSI: Miami", that would be written around the music, collapsed when Love, the publisher and former members of NIRVANA asked for "twice the industry standard" in licensing fees, leading CBS-TV to back off.

At least Courtney didn't insist on writing the episode of CSI. CBS should thank its lucky stars it didn't spend weeks taking delivery of small pieces of paper with the words "plottKILLRy ANADAms" scrawled all over.

Last FM deny giving data to the RIAA; TechCrunch try a 'you sort of do' defence

CBS's LastFM outpost are hopping mad over a story that TechCrunch ran on Friday, claiming that they'd given the RIAA details of anyone whose scrobbling included unreleased tracks.

Let's just think about that for a moment: why would that information be of any real use to the RIAA? Just because a track is unreleased, it doesn't automatically follow that someone listening to it is doing so illegally: there are legitimate reasons for having an album before it is on sale to the general public. And Last FM have users around the globe, but mostly not in the US, so it seems that the figures would be of less use to the RIAA than, say, the BPI or IFPI. And the RIAA have, belatedly, announced plans not to embark on any more lawsuits against individuals.

However, that the figures would be virtually meaningless and useless doesn't ultimately preclude the music industry seeking them - it's not like the RIAA doesn't enjoy sending itself off on fools' errands.

The TechCrunch story, though, is based on a single, unnamed source, who "heard" it from a friend who heard it from a friend who heard it from another that you'd been messing around. Sorry, had heard it from a friend at CBS. Which is a bit of a weak chain upon which to base such a serious claim.

Last FM and CBS are furious:

Another rejection from systems architect Russ Garrett on Last’s forum: “I’d like to issue a full and categorical denial of this. We’ve never had any request for such data by anyone, and if we did we wouldn’t consent to it. Of course we work with the major labels and provide them with broad statistics, as we would with any other label, but we’d never personally identify our users to a third party - that goes against everything we stand for. As far as I’m concerned Techcrunch have made this whole story up.”

As a result of the story, people have been scrambling to stop their scrobbling:

London developer, Jonty Wareing posted on TechCrunch: “What annoys me is that people are deleting accounts and losing their entire scrobbling history based on shoddy journalism. This hurts those people who have spent years carefully collecting their data far more than last.fm as a whole. We have now stopped the job that removes users marked for deletion, so if you did delete your account in haste and want your scrobbles back, please contact our support team.”

While you can understand Last FM rushing to back-up data in case people are deleting in a funk and want to come back when they realise it's been a lot of silly fuss over nothing, is it entirely ethical to receive a request to delete an account, chuckle that they probably don't mean it, and store the data instead? Isn't this like lovers of poets who are supposed to burn diaries when the poet dies, but flog them to Faber and Faber instead?

Especially since the deletions might not be people going "shit, Last FM are telling people about my illegally downloaded copy of Horse With No Name". It might be that the story has reminded them (or made them aware) of exactly what it means having a system set up so that every time you play a song, the entire internet is made aware of it. They might be deleting not because they believe CBS is handing over data now, but because they don't want to be leaving muddy footprints just in case.

Should Last FM really be deciding their users don't really know their own minds?

Back at TechCrunch, Erick Schonfeld is trying to shore up a story that's fallen apart:

Soon after I posted, however, plenty of unofficial but heartfelt denial came from Last.fm staffers in London, two of which I linked to last night in the update above. The one from Russ Garrett, in particular, raised even more questions. His denial starts out unequivocal, but then he adds a squishy disclaimer:

I’d like to issue a full and categorical denial of this. We’ve never had any request for such data by anyone, and if we did we wouldn’t consent to it.

Of course we work with the major labels and provide them with broad statistics, as we would with any other label, but we’d never personally identify our users to a third party - that goes against everything we stand for.

Hmm, so could the RIAA or a record label use the data to identify people? I never suggested that it was Last.fm that was singling out individuals listening to unreleased tracks. The issue is whether the RIAA or any of its member companies are trying to do so and whether or not Last.fm is helping them.

As Garrett points out, Last.fm shares aggregate listening data with the labels. Are there any unique identifiers associated with this data that could lead back to an individual, despite any precautions Last.fm might take? (It wouldn’t be unprecedented—remember that leaked AOL search data a few years ago?) I sent Garrett an email about 5 hours ago asking him some of these questions.

From the very beginning, I’ve presented this story for what it is: a rumor. Despite my attempts to corroborate it and the subsequent detail I’ve been able to gather, I still don’t have enough information to determine whether it is absolutely true. But I still don’t have enough information to determine that it is absolutely false either. What I do have are a lot of unanswered questions about how exactly Last.fm shares user data with the record industry.

Now, there's some interesting meat in his defence, but most of this just soy-shapes. Posting a story which says "Last FM are handing individual's data over to the RIAA" and then attempting to justify it by saying "ah, but they share their listening stats with record labels" (which, given they pay them money for plays of tracks is hardly a revelation anyway) is an attempt at misdirection rather than justification.

Last day at work: CBS semidecimates Last FM team

As CBS struggles to make money from the internet, it's using 'select all-delete' to its expensive buy-in Last FM. Twenty-ish staff are being sent to the dole queues, mostly from the London office, reports TechCrunch.

Not quite so many other music blogs are available

Top-flight US music writer-stuffed website Juke has been juiced. You might not have heard of it; that's because it never quite got out the starting gates. CBSi had somehow ended up owning the service, and appear to have decided it was better off closing it down before it did anything.

Janet Jackson's nipple: Now half a million bucks cheaper

The Janet Jackson Superbowl nip-slip wasn't indecent enough to justify the FCC fine, a US court has ruled. The federal appeals court tossed the $550,000 fine the FCC levied against CBS on the grounds that it was acting out of character:

The court found that the FCC deviated from its nearly 30-year practice of fining indecent broadcast programming only when it was so "pervasive as to amount to 'shock treatment' for the audience."

"Like any agency, the FCC may change its policies without judicial second-guessing," the court said. "But it cannot change a well-established course of action without supplying notice of and a reasoned explanation for its policy departure."

The overall effect was somewhat spoiled when CBS executives present in the court dropped their trousers for a bare-arsed celebration.

You've seen the last of us: Warners pulls off Last FM

Last FM's rather useful free streaming music service has undergone a bit of a stutter, as Warners has just pulled its catalogue off the service.

Silicon Valley Insider is making the probably-quite-safe-bet that Warners is trying to demand a greater slice of the Last pie - it points out Warner has taken a slice of equity in both MySpace and Imeem as part of the agreements to allow their stuff to be streamed.

It's interesting to see that Warners would rather hide its tracks from a monthly audience of twenty million plus in return for a tiny portion of a cent; the gamble is that if people can't find Into The Groove on LastFM, they'll try for it somewhere else. Rather than choose to listen to something else instead. They might think pulling the catalogue is going to force Last FM's hand; Last FM will probably react like parents faced with kids who refuse to move: "okay, you sit there, I'm carrying on without you. Goodbye..."

Grammys: Fewer watch, again

The quickest tot-ups of ratings for the Grammys last night make grim reading for CBS, with 12% of last year's viewers going missing, and 18% of the 18-49 year old viewers not turning up. It's almost as if the tantalising prospect of an English crackhead singer about not going to get the treatment she's currently having wasn't such a draw after all.

CBS affiliate settles in Rhode Island Fire

The legal ripples from the Great White nightclub fire continue to spread; WPRI-TV and one of their camera team have reportedly reached a settlement with survivors and relatives. The CBS affiliate was being sued over claims their cameraman Brian Butler had blocked escape routes by filming on the night of the fire - a claim they had vigorously denied.

Ironically, Butler was in the club filming a feature on safety in public places when the band's firework display went terribly wrong.

Early reports place the deal at around $30million.

[Part of Rhode Island nightclub fire coverage]

Last FM upgrades - massively

Aha. So, that's what CBS are doing with LastFM. The advertising-supported service has got all the majors, and bazillions of indies on board to allow free, ado-supported streaming for all.

Or at least, Americans and Europeans.

Quincy Smith, president of CBS Interactive, took the podium to announce an overview of the plan to distribute music from the Big Four major labels -- Sony BMG, Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group and EMI Music -- plus Ioda, Naxos, The Orchard and about 150,000 indie labels and bands, all for free. Each label deal is different, according to Smith. The total number of songs available now is 3.5 million, but the company is aggressively adding content, and Stiksel said it will never stop adding music. "The mission is to have every track available," said Last.fm co-founder Martin Stiksel.

Every track? That's really quite a challenge. We won't consider it done until they've got Ride Mindfuck on, mind.

Last FM attempts to fix Christmas

In the seasonal rush for a Christmas number one - Cliff Richard, whatever bag of spuds is spewed up from the X Factor, something supposedly funny - a new paper-hat-from-a-cracker has been hurled into the ring in the shape of Lucky Soul's Lips Are Unhappy. This has been chosen by the CBS-funded Last.FM community to be the target for a campaign designed to show the power of online hitmaking. The idea being that everyone on Last.FM buys a copy, it takes the seasonal number one position and everyone in the music industry quakes in front of the power of the new hitmakers.

There's a couple of problems here. First, as the NME's embarrassing attempts to propel God Save The Queen to number one demonstrated, it's not actually that easy to rig the charts in this way.

The second is what, exactly, is the motivation for Last.FM members meant to be here? Admittedly, they were invited to participate in a vote to chose the record that would be pushed by the campaign - but presumably the people who voted for Lucky Soul would be interested in buying it anyway; those who preferred another track would, surely, rather spend their money on buying a song they liked rather than one they didn't?

And it's the purchase price that is key here: sure, the download is priced at a reasonable 49p, but that's still an actual payment. Why would anyone want to spend half a quid of their own money on what is, in effect, a marketing campaign for a company owned by one of the biggest media organisations in the world? If CBS want to push Last.FM, can't they use some of the Viacom outdoor poster sites rather than shaking down the userbase to chip in to cover the costs?