I’m listening to Best Of David Bowie as I type this. No, I’m not streaming it for free on MySpace Music. Instead, I’ve uploaded the album, which I own, to new music site called BlueTunes. The new service, which launches today, is trying to avoid paying streaming music fees to labels because users are uploading and then playing their own music.
If this sounds familiar it’s because it’s not the first time users could upload their music to the cloud and listen to it anywhere. Michael Robertson’s MP3.com tried it in 2000 and was promptly sued for copyright infringement. They lost, shut down the service and settled for $200 million.
Robertson was back in 2005 with a different take on the service called MP3Tunes. EMI sued MP3Tunes as well, but isn’t doing so well in court this time around.
The reason MP3.com lost the suit was because users weren’t actually uploading songs. Instead, they simply put a CD in their drive to prove they owned it (or at least had it for a few minutes). MP3.com, which already had a copy of all songs on its servers, then gave the users access to the songs online. Great idea, but the courts said no way.
MP3Tunes, by contrast, makes users actually upload every song they want to listen to online. Back in 2005 I tried the service and gave up after repeated crashes, but other people have said the service works fine. Still, in a time when you can listen to virtually any recorded song legally and for free on MySpace Music, Last.fm and iMeem, going to all the trouble of uploading those songs seems like a bit of a waste of time.
BlueTunes is opting for the MP3.com-type model. They say they have a “next generation uploader (patent pending)” that uploads songs “in a fraction of the time that it would normally take.” But the secret behind the upload is that songs aren’t really being uploaded if someone else has already done it. CEO Nick Alexander writes in an email to us:
Right now, one of our distinguishing features between us and our competition is our uploader’s technology. When a user uploads a file, the file is scanned and if it already exists on our servers, then it does not have to be uploaded. Thus, as our music collection grows, it will hopefully take a matter of seconds to minutes to upload several gigabytes of music. The technology we use to scan the file is currently patent pending.
That’s too close to the MP3.com model, and the labels are going to be all over this.
BlueTunes says they’ve raised $1.2 million in angel funding. I’m worried about this startup, which provides the same functionality (streaming music) that can be found all over the internet, but requires users to spend time “uploading” music and has a 100% chance of being sued by the RIAA. That $1.2 million isn’t going to be nearly enough to see you through this.
Comments
I’d be really interested in hearing how Nick Alexander and others who pitched BlueTunes to their angel investors addressed the issue of feasibility. Obviously they were able to make the case well enough to warrant their investor dumping $1.2 million into the venture.
RIAA can be pretty ruthless. Excited to see what happens with this. Either it will go under the radar for a while, or it will end up in court. Excitement either way.
Excitement either way.
AWESOME!!!! WE CAN’T LOSE!!!
It´s a good idea, but i prefer http://www.deezer.com. It offers you free space to storage your music, but also plays lots of music you don´t have
It is great also, how you can browse the song anytime.
It´s the perfect mixture: Last.fm+cloud
Anyhow, it show us the way to go….
Isn’t Anywhere.fm doing the same thing? I’m not sure if they use the same “patent-pending uploading technology” but it seems like a very simple feature addition if it ends up being legally viable.
I’m lucky to have a simple script my friend developed
anywhere.fm was acquired by imeem, so technically it’s now legal.
The service will be fine. From what Mike says is seems they are no different from any other service that lets you backup/store files in the “cloud”.
I suppose if you had to download the file to listen to it wouldn’t be such a big deal. However, since the line between web apps and desktop apps merge it will be hard to argue the difference.
– that allows me to stream my music collection using a LAMP setup. It’s not perfect, as you have to leave your computer on when you want access, but at least it bypasses the legal issues, uploading and advertisements.
Sorry for the double post, hit the comment button accidentally.
Reminds me of Anywhere.fm, which was bought for a ton of money by Meebo I believe.
Cool site. I expect it to do well. Can’t see how they could get sued, because users are uploading their own files. Wouldn’t box.net, xdrive, etc., all also be liable if BlueTunes is liable?
They misspell “experiance” twice on their jobs description page. Sketchy
Just charge them 20% more.
Seeqpod.com is still the best for my money - free streaming music from almost any artist
Go under the radar? After being TechCrunched? Hah.
I’m rolling with Spotified. If they just give me a mobile solution I’m hooked for life.
I would rather use http://www.nutsie.com - all I need to do is upload my iTunes library file and bingo, it finds my tracks and plays them for me - streaming and good! That’s a 2-minute setup job.
Lala is doing this, but with no upload required. If the mp3 exists on your hardrive the song is automatically added to your library on lala. As far as I know they’re the only ones to ever get a license to allow this.
The Angel funding might have been possible because of the patent pending technology for uploading and/or detecting/checking against existing db.
So it’s worth it may be even if they were to get sued by RIAA.
I just hope the patent pending technology isn’t doing some kind of hash and checking against a db. If that’s the case it could be more than laughable if the grant them the patent
So what is actually copyright violation according to RIAA?
RTFA. There are links.
Deadpool ‘em now, Michael. FAIL.
The issue with BlueTune’s model/technology is one of licensed distribution. By repurposing a previously uploaded file for someone else’s use, they’re re-distributing content without a license. This is what brought MP3.com down.
For consumer plays with no deal in hand with the labels, its best to stay on the “storage/playback” or “processing/handling” side of digital music. Although, even these positions aren’t completely immune to legal saber-rattling by the RIAA, as evidenced by EMIs suit against MP3Tunes.com.
But the user has a license. The uploader has determined the audio fingerprint of the file to be the same as one already on the server.
Which reminds me of a business opportunity. Buy up old copies of recorded music: records, tapes, CDs it doesn’t matter. Store them in the cheapest physical storage facility you can. Then resell the licenses for that music to people over the web. If users want to physically own the item, you can ship it to them. Otherwise, you just get access to the music digitally.
But it’s not the same physical file that “belongs” to the user. I know it sounds silly, but technically, BlueTune doesn’t have the right to grant users access to songs (physical files) that originated from anything other than the ones that originated from the user. They can’t just verify and distribute.
I know these guys - most of them are students at Duke University (where I was an undergrad) and I interviewed many of them last week for Mint.com. I wish them all the best with BlueTunes…
Aaron Patzer, Founder & CEO, Mint.com
more systems for us
Luckily for them, there’s enough “illegal” sites out there to slip through the cracks…for a little while. The RIAA can only target so much at one time.
Let me see that $1.2mil! I’ve got a superior idea, 13 months of implementation and most of all, it’s COMPLETELY LEGAL…just wait
This is almost exactly the same as Myplay, which launched in 1999. They let you upload to a “locker”, and they did the same trick of detecting whether a file was already uploaded and not storing multiple copies. As far as I can recall they were never sued by the RIAA, but the service never caught on (and it had no business model).
You’re also wrong that mp3.com’s service was shut down. As part of the settlement with the majors they obtained licenses for my.mp3.com aka “beam-it” (remember, they ended up being acquired by Vivendi which also owned the biggest major). But it too never caught on. And with services like last.fm, imeem and myspace music, which go far beyond the alternatives that were available when mp3.com was around, there’s basically zero hope for this thing.
What they should be doing is requiring uploads in all cases, but only storing a single instance. Then the front end would be more-legalish (a la mp3tunes), creating a wall that could prevent any backend legalities from having to be dealt with. Do the upload charade and as long as the mp3tunes case is still going and you’d be fine.
MyPlay’s services never caught on?!
At its height, MyPlay had a user base of over 6.5 million subscribers and was sold for around USD$30 million.
To date, its still the closest thing there was to a celestial jukebox and before cloud was a buzz word.
Look like they don’t have originality, i will wait till they got traffic and get big and then i won’t be surprised if they got copyright issue.
Nat
http://www.workersinc.com
It’s a nice idea — I had the same idea once (as I’m sure thousands of other devs have) and started developing the app before I decided I didn’t want to waste my time opening up yet another web app with no business model (esp. one that would get torn up by legal issues). I just stream from my home workstation now instead.
Their signup form doesn’t seem to be working all that well as of now… How many months does everyone give them until they close up shop?
The patent or license to their audio matching technology could be worth a lot of money - from matching ring tones to alien sounds from MARS. I am sure its not a simple DB comparison like someone suggested ..
Looks like a 1 to 1 copy of http://mediamaster.com
a
aaa
These work-around models will fail as soon as itunes goes up into the clouds
Speaking of http://www.mediamaster.com
They are doing exactly the same thing as mp3tunes.com and have not been sued. So there is room to grow until you become big enough to be sued. Also, mp3tunes.com was an easier target because of Robertson’s prior history.
Would be good to get Michael’s perspective on BlueTunes.
Mp3Tunes just launched Load2Mobile which looks very cool.
http://www.mp3tunes.com/cb/load2mobile
I’ll have to give BlueTunes a try, how fast is it really uploading songs, or is it really uploading?
As far as streaming your own music collection goes, I can’t recommend http://jukefly.com highly enough. No uploading required.
Linking to other people’s file is a problem for which they will be sued if they become any big. In order to stay at least in grey - they need to make users upload their own music.
I heard that Apple is in talks to acquire Mediamaster.com… will see how it turns out. Should be really exciting!
bluetunes is amazing. nick alexander is a genius
Nick is a genius and any investor who had the privilege to get in has his downside hedged by the team’s ingenuity.
andrew first is a hottie
i assume downloading the tunes is not possible, due to legal issues?
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