RadioBlogClub Abandons Old Pirate Ship for Bigger One
Nick Gonzalez
12 comments »
Those familiar with Paris-based RadioBlogClub were greeted with a service outage this morning. You may remember it from the comments in our coverage of the web iPod emulator, Blogmusik, which is also down. The music streaming service’s traffic has busted the seams of their old web server and they’re moving on to a beefier one. It’s easy to see why. A quick glance at the Alexa stats shows them in Pandora’s ballpark.
While the original intent of the site is to provide easy song streaming embeds for music bloggers, I have a feeling RadioBlogClub is so popular because it’s also an easy way to get free music. The service works by acting as a hub, linking the music stored on various members websites (kind of like the inverse of HypeMachine). Bloggers feed the site links to their music by running their songs through a converter before uploading them to their site. The converter changes MP3s to the site’s RBS format and registers the songs with their database. All the songs registered on the site can be played individually or in user generated playlists on the main site or in embedded widgets like the one below.
While the site streams and doesn’t explicitly promote downloading, sites have already popped up to enable them. This is the same lesson YouTube learned when we released our own YouTube movie downloader and got slapped with a take down notice.
It hits home on the same content control problems we’ve ranted about before. Any content streamed to your system can be captured and DRM systems have a bad habit of getting cracked. Bill Gates is understandably dissatisfied with the state of DRM and Steve Jobs publicly called for the its death. The music (TV/Movie) industry needs a new revenue model fast (not a music tax). We like Amie Street’s model so far, especially their free Barenaked Ladies album.
TechCrunch France broke the story.
UPDATE: Ouriel Ohayon of TCF reported RadioBlogClub has been forced to move their hosting provider (currently OVH) under pressure of the French version of the RIAA, called SACEM.
The only problem with getting more popular is they are a bigger blig on riaa radar. Congrats to them.
Is this legal?
I think if they are paying for the songs then it might be legal and but it sounds like there is no payment involved here.
Well this is true, but actually it’s a second effect of Radioclub been closed after pression from french authority that collect royaltees of french artist (SACEM)…
More details in french newspaper like Le Monde http://www.lemonde.fr/web/arti.....637,0.html
or on Mubility http://blog.mubility.com/
I love Blogmusik…I use the site everyday. I just hope they don’t get shut down any time soon.
I wondered when you would takl about Amie Street in this post
It seems that they were kicked out by their server host, because of copyright problems with the french music radio regulation organisation. They tried to make an agreement to pay fees for french music stream, but the “sacem” wanted 8% from the whole traffic on the website althought french music only represent 15% of the music played.
If you can read french :http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-651865,36-883206@51-867637,0.html
TechCrunch France broke the news: the migration has been forced indeed by disagreement with SACEM during negociations, the French equivalent of RIAA
more in French in http://fr.techcrunch.com/2007/.....-la-sacem/
Same as radioblog but legal, Creative Commons-enabled and with BitTorrent :
http://www.jamendo.com/
On a related matter,
Michael,
Did you get the authorization from Prince to stream Purple rain ?
If not (and I doubt you did), what you are doing is just ILLEGAL. Please remove that and respect intellectual property, that’s what Creative Commons is for.
mog has an embeddable player. there are hundreds of streaming mp3 postings each day.
seem them all at
http://www.mog.com/mog-o-sphere