Good news today for Last.fm lovers, the official Last.fm iPhone application has been released …for some, as it doesn’t appear to be available outside of the United States and some part of Europe, because it certainly isn’t available from the iTunes Australia store.
The Last.fm team writes on their blog
First of all we are initially rolling this out in the US, UK, Canada, France, Germany and Spain. We’re looking at other locales but have to deal with licensing and a host of other issues. We assure you that we’re working on it.
Licensing issues? Hold on a second, don’t I have the Last.fm Mac application on my laptop and desktop, happily delivering music on demand? Exactly what difference does an iPhone application have in terms of licensing that the Last.fm website doesn’t have? And what exactly is “a host of other issues?” Is Apple making it hard to distribute apps across multiple iTunes stores perhaps, as Google isn’t offering its iPhone search application either (and there can be no licensing issues there).
Is Apple to blame?
For now, Last.fm iPhone App is riding the fail whale. A service that has benefited greatly from not being georetarded like Pandora is now choosing to not distribute its iPhone app that is in no ways different to the desktop in regards to local licensing issues.
If anyone can suggest an alternative let me know.
