I said their downloads sound lower; hence, worse; than most other give-away MP3s elsewhere. Almost all in other places are designed to be not quite as good as a purchased product but Last.Fm's are so low that they need adjusted with some sort of software just to play them on your own MP3 player along with other freebie files with the same bit rate or you end up dealing with big differences between songs. Besides, it's up to the bands whether or not they want to give them away for free and the bands don't have any control on the excessive loss via Last.fm. Guess that's why so many are now resorting to other services for distributing free downloads.
Don't get me wrong, Last.fm is providing a decent service (not one I'm 'buying' though) but there's plenty of other options out there that offer the same or similar services and many that give away better sounding MP3s. It's definitely not one of their strong points. Their strong point is showing off to the world what you are listening to and offering a pick and play service much like Pandora, something the RIAA and others tried to stop several years ago. In fact, those type of organizations are probably where most of their profits are going.