• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, April 3, 2008

Internet radio is seeing the flurry of content and sales deals continue in first-quarter 2008. The latest partnership brings together CBS Radio and Last.fm to share content. The deal will allow the Internet company to stream audio from CBS radio station broadcasts live, while giving listeners from the CBS Radio Internet Network access to Last.fm's library of free online music.

For Last.fm, the deal represents a substantial increase in the number of broadcast partners and breadth of content it can offer--adding CBS Radio's 140 stations to its existing partnerships with Universal, EMI, Warner Music Group and Sony BMG, as well as about 150,000 independent artists and studios. The station list includes top CBS properties like New York's WCBS-FM, Los Angeles' KROQ, Chicago's WXRT and Atlanta's WVEE. Last.fm users will be able to access the content through CBS' new online audio player.

CBS will be able to increase its online advertising reach through Last.fm's promotional and distribution platforms--as well as entice more listeners to its own proprietary Web sites with the promise of access to millions of free songs offered on demand by the Last.fm library.

The alliance comes after CBS struck a deal with AOL that will make a broad array of content available to AOL users, including over 150 music, news, talk and sports stations. In addition to providing content, CBS is assuming responsibility for ad sales for all of AOL's online stations, which number more than 200, as well as the 140 stations it brings to the table.

It also follows an announcement by Cox Radio in mid-March that it will provide information from all its U.S. stations to RadioTime, which allows Internet users to browse, search and listen to online radio from terrestrial stations with its RadioGuide interface. The station IDs and other information will appear on Radio Guide alongside the streaming audio. Cox joins about 100 other radio networks and a total of about 100,000 programs on the RadioTime site.

RadioTime's listening service is compatible with Yahoo Music Jukebox and Windows, and provides software that allows PC users to timeshift online radio.

On the sales side, in January, TargetSpot--an online radio ad service developed by CBS Radio and venture capitalists--signed up six new partners, including inTune.fm, a popular audio application on Facebook.

Last year also saw numerous deals. In November 2007, Triton Media Group bought Excelsior Radio Networks and its two subsidiaries, Dial Global and MJI Interactive. In July 2007, Katz Media Group acquired Net Radio Sales, renamed Katz Net Radio Sales. Also in July, Ronning Lipset Radio announced that it had partnered with Corstarr to use its Adcor technology for delivering Internet radio ads.