Ezmo: Another Online Music Application Nibbling At iTunes

ezmo_logo.pngWe’ve come a long way since the record industry sued MP3.com in 2000. Listening to copies of your digital music online is quickly becoming commonplace and Norway’s Ezmo is another web application helping push the trend.

Ezmo, like Anywhere.FM, is a clone of iTunes on the web that just came to the United States. Their Flash based player lets you upload your music to the web, organize it into playlists, and share with your friends (just 10). Unlike Anywhere.FM, Ezmo lets you not only pull music from iTunes, but upload music from your Windows Media Player and Winamp music collections too. However, Anywhere.FM still wins out in my mind for the time being. I find it easier for me to use because its user interface stays truer to iTunes. Their buddy radio is also an easy way to consume new music on par with Last.FM. Ezmo only lets you share music with ten friends.

The two companies compete with a host of other online music locker/streaming services like Mp3tunes, Maestro, imeem, Streampad, Songbird, and MediaMasters.

However, as labels and artists free themselves from DRM, sites like these open up a way around iTunes’s stranglehold over digital music sales. DRM-free music is compatible with the extremely popular iPod, which could turn these sites into another point of sale for digital music on the device (unless they become free). Anywhere.FM has already let listeners buy songs they listen to through Amazon’s new digital downloads service. Add to that a compelling simplicity missing from older online sites (Yahoo Music, Rhapsody) and these might be the type of convenient services Ian Roger’s is looking for.

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