Last.fm, the popular internet music streaming service, has announced that all third-party apps will be shut out of its service. Popular third-party clients include Windows Mobile’s Pocket Scrobbler, S60’s Mobbler, and if you’re a Crackberry addict, Flipside also will go the way of the dinosaur. Citing pressures from record labels and wanting to flex its muscles, these changes should take place in the near future.

Last.fm breaks it down further in its forums:

Last.fm has never had a public radio API, although we've tolerated third-party clients using the undocumented calls that our client uses. This is finally about to change - we're going to make a public, documented streaming API available to everyone who has an API account. There are a few limitations:

• Only subscribers will be allowed to stream using API applications unless you negotiate a separate deal with us - we need to get the money to cover royalties.
• You won't be allowed to use our API to stream to mobile phones. This is unfortunately a limitation of some of our licensing agreements. Again, we may be able to make an exception to this if you talk to us directly.

So on the upside, current developers may take advantage of new APIs to help them develop under Last.fm’s guidance. Word on the street is that the official apps on the iPhone and Android platform will continue to work, as they are officially sanctioned.

This is going to upset a lot of people. But the good news is that there still will be APIs available for developers, it'll just cost some cash.

Last.fm via Gizmodo

If you haven’t been using Pocket Tunes 4.1, you’ve been missing out. In my opinion, PocketTunes is one of the few truly powerful media players for Windows Mobile. Offering synchronization with iTunes, Internet radio and support for different skins, Pocket Tunes has been on my must-have list ever since it was first released for Windows Mobile.

If you remember (or want to read) my review of Version 4.1, there were a couple of issues we wanted resolved. I’m guessing that the folks at Normsoft were listening; because they took care of the biggest issues that I had, as well as resolving some issues that I hadn’t even thought about.

Read on for all the updates in Version 5.0.

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I love me some Pandora -- it's an online music service that allows you to create virtual 'stations' based on your favorite artist or song, then allows you to refine that station by rating music up and down. They've created a wildly popular client for the iPhone, but Windows Mobile is still waiting. The good news: Pandora is working on a mobile client for their music service for Windows Mobile. The bad news: we could have written that exact sentence over two years ago, as this timeline at wmpoweruser makes clear.

It's not hopeless, though, as the CTO at Pandora, Tom Conrad, responded to the above with a well-written letter:

The good news is that we do have a team working on Windows Mobile versions of Pandora. Given my track record it’s probably best not to comment on the “when” but it’s certainly not a question of “if”.
At least for a small company like Pandora, the incredibly diverse mobile universe creates a real challenge with respect to where to place your limited resources. Without question the iPhone turned out to be a great bet for us. So far, the investment in feature phones has been a more modest success. We’re all optimistic that we’ll be able to find a iPhone-like success on Windows Mobile, but only time will tell.

In the meantime, there's always Last.FM.