According to a recent disclosure by online music site Last. fm, the company’s personalised radio for free for mobiles will soon become a thing of the past; and users will have to pay for the mobile phone service from next Tuesday onwards.

With the new mobile service to be available at a £3 per month cost from next week, users will be able to listen to personalised radio stations, but not to pick out individual songs.

However, the desktop web versions of the site in the UK, Germany and the USA, as well as the windows Mobile 7 version, will remain free. In addition, Xbox Live members in the US will also continue to get free music streaming.

Though, thus far, Last. fm has been offering personalized radio for free for mobiles, and generating revenue by placing adverts between songs, the company now feels that the strategy is “not practical.” As such, it will now be asking users to pay a service that will be ad-free.

Noting that Last. fm is “trying to make rational decisions about its business model,” Matthew Hawn – the company’s Vice President of product – said: “We think that the best experience is ad-free. You’ll see that this change brings us in line with other music services that already charge you to listen to music on mobile devices.”

However, the disappointed users are of the opinion that though the Last. fm strategy of a paid ad-free service “makes sense,” they would “rather have adverts and keep it free.”