Jigg That Music

January 18th, 2007 at 1:23 am

I love the concept, what a great tool to help budding musicians. But really can do with a model, were users can also go and buy the track!!

Cheers

January 18th, 2007 at 1:40 am

Nice clean layout. I like it.

January 18th, 2007 at 2:04 am

This is exactly like Epitaph’s “Demolition,” which has been online for many years:
http://www.epitaph.com/demolition/

Bands post their songs and the top-rated ones float to the top.

It is easily gamed.

January 18th, 2007 at 2:29 am

The fact that you have to actually upload an mp3 rather than posting a link to a page where it is streamed is a big minus.
Imagine that you had to save an article you found on the web as a doc file and then upload it in order to digg it… come on…

January 18th, 2007 at 3:09 am

What about http://www.sellaband.com ? I am totally in love with this concept and already 2 bands made their $ 50.000 target to make a CD, made possible by fans!

January 18th, 2007 at 4:10 am

Michael, we didn’t even submit our site hoping to do it when we put in the next update and see some more traction.

I know you’re saying “ungreatful guy”–thanks for covering us:)

What you’re seeing is closer to a very simple prototype(1 developer, 3 months) than all the stuff we have planned for iJigg.

Btw I think having that one bit on French Techcrunch really is helping us spread in Europe. We’ve more reviews in Spanish and French it seems than English. Wierd but welcome aboard my European friends:)

–Zaid

January 18th, 2007 at 4:30 am

Too bad I can’t seem to be able to upload music using Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.9) Gecko/20070104 Red Hat/1.0.7-0.6.fc5 SeaMonkey/1.0.7

January 18th, 2007 at 4:42 am

This is pretty impressive for only 1 developer and 3 months.

Zaid…”What you’re seeing is closer to a very simple prototype(1 developer, 3 months) than all the stuff we have planned for iJigg.”

Looking forward to what comes next.

Jason

January 18th, 2007 at 4:57 am

Gerd, many of the points you raise are being addressed in the next update.

As far as uploads, are you on a mac? We’re having few issues for upload on it.

Why put this widget? Ask Mike - he puts up widgets all the time on TalkCrunch:)

-Zaid

January 18th, 2007 at 5:23 am

Zaid, what is your take on the legal position of ijigg. Are you licensed?

January 18th, 2007 at 5:40 am

To have super clarity: by own I mean own whatever rights they need to put that music on a site.:)

January 18th, 2007 at 5:59 am

Gerd,

I don’t know the exact stats but you’re wrong when you say “virtually none of it will be OWNED”. So far we’re getting owned music from artists themselves. We’re not surprised because those are the people we targeted in the reachout efforts before launch and after launch.

When/if this changes in the future, we’ll have to tweak our strategy obviously and we will.

I’m off to enjoy our first snow in few years in Chapel Hill:)

Keep Jigging,

-Zaid

January 18th, 2007 at 6:31 am

I love the digg like feature, but this site one last with its current business plan / model. It is a widget, a cool one, that would best be used in a real music service like iTunes.

January 18th, 2007 at 7:08 am

The concept is cool/unique and atlast somebody has taken the digg concept further to an un-explored area…hope digg will not mind it

January 18th, 2007 at 7:43 am

the ability to create a mash on-the-fly is entertaining. i mashed these two:

goegoe_in_tubui_matadigi_secret_mix,
music circus 5 - richard wagner

- start ‘goegoe’ and let it play for a minute to set the mood, then overlay mr. wagner’s circus. neat stuff!

you can find them here:

http://www.ijigg.com/cgi-bin/i.....mp;page=20

-stan

January 18th, 2007 at 8:14 am

Props to Rodolfo - you’re a super coder, bro:)

Note to others: we’ve yet to even meet in person in the 5+ years we’ve worked together on various things. But all that will change real soon:)

-Zaid

January 18th, 2007 at 8:16 am

No one said that this is what I believe to be the 1st company off the FORUMS; company review page to be picked into - the mainstream TechCrunch Blog -

Just for fun; and a little research; so far the criteria seems to be the ratio of feedback to thread views. Pretty high for Ijigg.com

*also a legal note. You can’t have Ijigg.com get really large and basically mimmick the Digg model- without having to at the very minimum change the name.

- If I made a company /\/\icro5oft.com and we made things that were 80% look a likes of windows xp and vista - after we got large enough Mr. Gates would eat our lunch!

- I suggest some changes - or a good busines model and a quick exit strategy.

-Rbowles

p.s. the name just makes your a bigger target, the real issue is your similarities to Digg.

January 18th, 2007 at 8:25 am

Quick follow up. The songs have moved from the link I first posted. If you want to try the “GoeGoe / Wagner” mix the search for this string:

GoeGoe* Wagner

Also, regarding the copy-cat complaints. Most works (if not all) are derivative in some way and it’s these incremental takes on previous ideas that result in the most useful applications.

-Stan

January 18th, 2007 at 8:37 am

After all new artistes get a platform and an income an a impartial judgement. As for as riggers world can’t seem to get ri of them, Integrity is fast disapparing from the world and honest people a Endangered Species.

http://blogs.ibibo.com/TechnicalJournal

January 18th, 2007 at 8:44 am

Didn’t mean so sound like a hater in my previous comment. I don’t completely write off iJigg because of the name (although its like nails grinding on a chalkboard to my ears).

Generally, I do like it, but I am not into music enough enough to use it early and often.

To stan…I understand what you mean when you say “Most works (if not all) are derivative in some way and it’s these incremental takes on previous ideas that result in the most useful applications.”

My beef is when those derivatives are so small that although the product may be different…it is not different enough (the iteration was not large) and therefore can be confused with a copycat.

Still, best of luck to you. I am sure the future updates will build on your current successes.

January 18th, 2007 at 9:03 am

Nice clone. And at least unlike the other digg clones iJigg focuses on a different subject matter.

January 18th, 2007 at 9:25 am

Horrid content.

It has the standard genre problem.
Choose “classical” - whatever that means - and it’s clear that the taxonomists don’ know - and you see a handful of titles with only one that might even be considered “classical”.

Try Jazz. Yikes. Almost as bad.

January 18th, 2007 at 9:36 am

24pfilms, the mac issue has now been fixed:)

-Zaid

January 18th, 2007 at 11:59 am

Seems like a nice idea for a site. Only thing is that I dont like the name “iJigg” all that much.

January 18th, 2007 at 12:16 pm

The lawyers will eventually come knocking on their doors if this takes off (which is unlikely) as this is ripe for abuse.

Zaid: You state “So far we’re getting owned music from artists themselves.” How can you really verify that it’s the artist? And even if the artist does upload the music, they may not have the authority to if they’ve signed an agreement with a label that gives the label the distribution rights. It was also probably very foolish to indicate that you know copyrighted material will be uploaded and that you’ll deal with it using the DCMA. This statement could certainly be used against your company because you won’t be able to have any plausible deniability that you didn’t know the system was being or going to be abused.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: I predict that there is a very good chance that the courts will rule that services like this and YouTube are not protected by the Safe Harbor provisions of the DMCA. If I was an attorney arguing the case, I’d argue the following:

- These services are not merely hosts. They provide a “presentation layer” that enables end users to “play” the infringing content via their “software” and to search for infringing content.
- These services often transcode the infringing content from one file format to another to that their “software” can “play” the infringing content. It’s hard for me to argue that the traditional definition of a “host” as contemplated when the DMCA was written would consider a “host” to be any service that actually applies a physical process to a file that changes its format.

Consider that Napster was essentially a directory for pirated music and nothing more. No hosting, no presentation layer. Services like this, YouTube, iMeem, etc. are all directories, hosts and presentation layers, and they actively facilitate infringment on their service by performing some transcoding, I don’t see how a court could come down on Napster and not on these services.

It appears that iJigg may be aware of these things. Given how ripe for abuse this is and how similar in appearance parts of the site are to Digg’s design, I decided to take 5 minutes to do some “due diligence.” The ijigg.com domain registration is protected by a privacy service and their contact page only has email addresses. The address they’re using for DMCA complaints is a PO box and to my knowledge, the DMCA Safe Harbor provisions do not permit a PO box unless it is the only reasonable address that could be used in the region in question. There is no iJigg.com, Inc. (or iJigg, Inc.) registered in Delaware or North Carolina according to the Secretaries of State in those states, even though this is the entity listed on the iJigg website. Could an attorney use this to show that they are clearly trying to conceal their identity because of the legal issues? All this information seems to confirm my initial gut feeling that this is a little bit shady and I’m surprised that something so shady and uncompelling is featured on TechCrunch and other blogs.

January 18th, 2007 at 1:16 pm

As everyone can see, it’s a full time job just keeping up with all of these new social networking sites. Someone has to do it, right? Anyway, interesting concept.

January 18th, 2007 at 1:40 pm

Besides my last post… Z Man you need to start offering download/purchases and giving royalties back to the artist, because there is where you will make your money. Another thing that would be nice to see is a way I can have all my Jiggs dumped into my iPod from just clicking on something in the site.

Isn’t there a way to make a more complex RSS feed where your widget could be what shows up on say my Google Homepage? I would love to see it on my Google Home Page!

Good luck!

January 18th, 2007 at 2:01 pm

I need some real sleep. Above name should be “Zaid” not “Davis”:)

-Zaid

January 18th, 2007 at 2:12 pm

Jim Greevy: I was not aware that their founder has been making the rounds, but the point still remains. They have listed a corporation that apparently does not exist and to my knowledge you cannot use a PO box address to receive DMCA complaints in most circumstances. At best, the people operating the site have made significant oversights that you would not expect from a serious business. Apparently they haven’t formed a company and I’d be surprised if they have retained legal counsel. I would look like a complete amateur if I told you that I was incorporated as Drama 2.0, Inc. but you couldn’t find any evidence that this corporation existed. How could you do business with an entity that doesn’t exist? Would you want to do business with a person that apparently didn’t know what they were doing?

Frankly, you don’t know what you’re talking about when you seem to indicate that the “spirit” of the site would be used to judge them. I’m not a fan of the RIAA, but the law is the law. Napster and others have tried to claim that there were substantial non-infringing uses to their service and that it was never intended to facilitate infringement but it didn’t work. Zaid has already indicated that iJigg knows they’re going to have to deal with abuse and they’re banking on the assumption that the DMCA Safe Harbor provisions will protect them. Personally, I think they have an interesting idea, but there are so many other interesting music services, like Pandora, that I find more complelling and there are certainly large sites like MySpace that have massive marketshare, so I don’t think iJigg will ever have to deal with this issue because it’s not likely to take off in a mainstream way. Looking at the content on there earlier (and some of the abusive song titles) there’s nothing great being uploaded as far as I can see.

January 18th, 2007 at 2:49 pm

There’s been quite a few misinformed comments.

1. The name does not infringe on “Digg.” There is nearly no chance of true confusion in the mark, site, and service. Not only that, there’s a plethora of sites currently weakening the Digg brand, and legally so. Digg is nowhere near strong enough to lay claim to all double “g’s” + the very old concept of voting to promote placement. Digg doesn’t even showcase music (yet…). I’m not saying a lawyer couldn’t argue otherwise but the addition of the “i” makes it rather safe.

2. iJigg can operate legally, just as every other online service provider today does. User-participated content is one of the major purposes of the DMCA’s existence. Providing an interface is inherent to the function of such a site. Without a legal process by which a site can comply with copyright law and still function, much of the web as we know it would not exist. That would be the abolishment of all user-generated material, such as all forum discussions, avatars, image portfolios, and these very comments. If you think YouTube, Flickr, and the like are going away, you’re sorely mistaken.

3. A developer of iJigg stating that it’s likely someone will at some point upload something that is not allowed does not suggest a company’s guilt. It suggests common sense. One only need consider the nature of the service (uploaded content). If anything, I’d argue that it shows they are aware of that inevitability and will be attentive.

4. They’ll need to designate an agent. It’s $80: http://www.copyright.gov/onlinesp/ (pdf form below at that page). Maybe they have but they don’t show in the list yet. http://www.copyright.gov/onlinesp/list/index.html

5. It would be one thing if iJigg were knowling promoting access to infringing files and not actively responding. Obviously, I imagine they will do what is expected of them. It’s nothing to fear. On the plus side, it’s a bit easier with music, as music is more readily verifiable; like-name checks/flags/file hashes are easier to detect.

6. Just because one uses a DBA with “Inc.” for an as-not-yet-registered corporation does not make it “shady.” It’s pretty typical for a new and young company. Of course, they should go ahead and register it sooner rather than later (though an LLC. would probably make more sense).

7. iJigg is a decent name. It’s a compromise between either having a unique name or invoking an identifiable response with a similar name (read: not confusingly similar). Using the word “Jigg” is about the best one could do for music, out of all the copycat possibilities. Besides, having a good unique name and affording its .com is quite difficult unless one wishes to add to the sea of alien-like jumbles of letters that suffer from their own generic nature.

It’s a start. Don’t get discouraged.

January 18th, 2007 at 4:33 pm

iAnon: You seem misinformed:

- Napster thought it was protected by the DMCA too. Whether their service is protected by the Safe Harbor provisions of the DMCA will only be determined if they are sued and the case goes to trial. It does not matter if you actively respond to takedown notices if you don’t qualify for the Safe Harbor provisions.
- User-generated content had nothing to do with the creation of the DMCA back in 1998. Read the history. It was written to create a set of guidelines and procedures by which ISPs could eliminate liability for any infrining content that was hosted by them. User-generated content was and is not a factor in the DMCA as it is irrelevant.
- “Providing an interface is inherent to the function of such a site.” What is being debated here is whether this interface, individually or in combination with other features of the service (transcoding of content, etc.), renders the company ineligible for the Safe Harbor provisions of the DMCA because they’re not a host/ISP. The definition of a host or ISP is something that is being questioned in pending lawsuits. There were features of Napster that were inherent in a filesharing service but it didn’t mean that the court found those features to be compliant with the law now did it? You should note that universal is apparently using some of these arguments (presentation, transcoding, etc.) in an ongoing lawsuit they have so we’ll see what the courts decide. I wouldn’t want to be the startup a media company goes after to try to set precident.
- There is no DBA involved here. When you put the “Inc.” after your name you are stating that you are a registered corporation. Most serious companies I know organize their company before launching their service, especially in a risky venture like this where the principals in the business could be personally liable for any lawsuits. Right now there’s no corporation to sue so the owners are unprotected.
- I personally would not, as an owner or employee of a service like this, make any reference in a public forum to infringing activity. It’s just stupid. Maybe the intentions are good, but if you get sued, expect that every little thing will be used against you. And when you’re a brand new startup, every little thing that has to be debated in court increases your legal bill and your chances of being forced out of business due to legal expenses.

“It’s nothing to fear” is probably one of the worst pieces of advice that could be given to a startup getting involved in any service where there is ongoing legal debate. I’m glad you’re not an attorney.

You work for iJigg by any chance?

January 18th, 2007 at 6:24 pm

Napster was incredibly slow to act in creating any adequate filtering. By then, it was too late. Napster, like other p2ps, suffered from its inability to really control and safe guard the content to which people have access, due to no centralized storage and administration. That made it nearly uncontrollable, which is a far cry from a managed web service that allows users to showcase their original music.

I’m not sure where you’ve gotten your information but you couldn’t be more incorrect in your assertion that it is not one of the DMCA’s primary functions to protect the liability of service providers from their users (user-generated content). I suggest you actually take a look at a summary of the DMCA: http://www.copyright.gov/legislation/dmca.pdf or skip right to Sec. 512(c): http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/.....sRO:e57590:

Of course, I agree about registering a corporation before launching or using an official title. A lot of states allow the filing of an LLC right online, so there’s even less excuse to delay.

I said “it’s nothing to fear” in the context of not having the fear of being willing to operate a site that has user-content. If one is willing to be diligent and have the effort to comply with the law, he or she will be one step closer to a successful site. Some of the points you made are valid. However, much of the popular sites of today are user-driven and legal. We’re not about to see the end of MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, forums, and so forth, so I’d chalk up some of your concerns to either fear-mongering (”drama-mongering”?) or a misunderstanding of the DMCA. Unless a site is likely illegal, debilitating fear doesn’t accomplish much. You raise a valid concern that a ‘healthy’ amount of fear is good.

—–
“You work for iJigg by any chance?”

No.

January 18th, 2007 at 9:02 pm

Got a break too… I’d like to thank all comments.

We’re concerned about the whole legal stuff and we already started to take care of it. It went bigger than our original expectations. Digged on 2nd day and crunched on the 4th.

The whole thing started with 3 guys by the end of the last year, we were planning to test the idea and take care of the rest meanwhile, while growing. I’m not even on USA.

I’d just like to ask those ones like DRAMA (whose comments are very important too) to say not only what not do to or what’s not legal but saying how to do it, or how would you do it, not just for us but for the next new good stuff that will appear here and will need advices.

Right now all I can say is that there are artists thaking us and this is a proof that we’re acomplishing ours goals.

January 18th, 2007 at 10:25 pm

@Drama:

You keep insulting their service. You’re being a complete jackass (Now back to listening to “Real Sick F*ck.”). Why are you being such a jackass? I can only assert that you’re jealous.

I will assume you’ve created nothing yourself. You’re just a yet another wannabe who thinks they know it all, and have nothing to show for it. You’re just another lame critic.

Now back to … wait, you don’t have a web service, do you?

January 19th, 2007 at 5:45 am

http://WeEatMusic.com