Corporations and Internet Radio a Recipe for Failure

When CBS acquired popular internet radio site Last.fm in May of 2007 for $280 million, I’m sure it was viewed as an avenue for CBS to diversify it’s audience and to grow Last.fm into the most popular and largest internet radio service available.  This hope for massive growth instead seems to have turned into a growth that CBS now wants removed.  In an article posted yesterday on TechCrunch, it was announced that approximately 20 percent of the staff at Last.fm will be laid off.  CBS is also reportedly laying off people in several other departments.  Perhaps CBS should stick to what it knows best and leave internet radio to those who know about and are passionate about music.  After all, other private internet radio sites such as Imeem and Pandora are doing just fine.  Is this just another example of a major corporation buying out company after company in an attempt to shovel in more revenue until it overextends itself to a point where it can no longer support all of its ventures?  This seems to be a trend that we may hopefully be seeing the end of.  This problem has been rampant for years within major record labels, financial institutions, and the automobile industry.  Now we are becoming painfully aware of how well that works out in the long-run.  But has CBS learned its lesson?  Yahoo Music announced on December 3, 2008 that it is handing over operation of its internet radio service to CBS.  While this may have occured nine days prior to the announced down-sizing of Last.fm, CBS had to know at that point that its current internet radio venture wasn’t succeeding.  So why take on another one?  At this point and time in our economy very little surprises me, so I won’t even venture a guess as what to their plans were with this decision.  My only hope is that they can keep at least one of these services afloat since the existence of internet radio is a necessary combatant against the conventional option of terrestrial radio.