We’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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I’d like to vent if I could …
First, the iPod device itself is hands-down the BEST device. I haven’t played with too many, but I just have nothing to complain about.
Second, and its really too bad, but iTunes just sucks for 2 reasons …
1) It prevents you from having a “media server”. Simply put, I want my iPod to contain music that I want to listen to while on the go. That means that I may want to add music to it while on the road from my laptop but also from my home media server where maybe my wife may of LEGALLY purchased some new tunes. Why does iTunes FORCE you to map your music collection to ONE machine? Why can’t it be the link between your media server and everything else? This really bugs.
2) iTunes does not allow you to “monitor” folders. I mean, COME ON! Who ONLY gets their music from iTunes? I get my music from various different sources… yes, some from iTunes. But guess what? Some come from me burning CDs, other MP3 stores, from my friends, etc… Why can’t I just put them on a single media server (aka Shared Folder) where all of my devices (iPod, DirecTv receiver, Xbox, PSP, etc) can all pull from? It can’t be that hard.
In closing, while I appreciate Apple’s devices I think that going after the GE model (GE turbine -> GE electricity distribution hubs -> GE power station -> GE power cables -> GE light socket -> GE lighbulb) won’t work for everyone.
I have a serious LOVE HATE thing with Apple.
Whew. I feel better now.
Very simple and easy to use. I like it, but how are they going to make money?
Lets see you calm iPod device itself is hands-down the BEST device even though you haven’t played with too many.. how do you know it’s the BESt… you don’t. While it’s very good the thing that makes it really shine, iTunes, is the thing you complain about the most.
I have developed a blogging website using PHP that is actually a Bangla Blog which covers lots of features of Web 2.0. But I cant figure it out, which key parts of Web 2.0 it have. Can you figure it out?
i smell a paid plug here
iTunes, the low hanging fruit!
http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com
One small correction:
Appears to be built using Flex, not Flash.
Mike
These sites are populating like rabbits.
There are a lot of us that agree that music is headed toward free. Once we reach that point, it makes sense for a label to withhold music from every distribution point but their own. After all, this is digital goods we are talking about and everything is just a click away.
The future is bright for those that own the content. Known artists will still be using a combination of label/manager/promoter. But, it’s going to be the companies (labels) that are in this business that also become the destinations for music discovery and distribution.
You will see Live Nation, Warner, etc, etc, etc, with their own platforms soon, and everyone else will be building widgets for them…
I think Ezmo is a step forward since it is not US based. I also like that sharing is limited to 10 friends. It could be a nice way to share a small set of tunes. I am not excited about that fact that it wouldn’t take me 2 months using 100% of my bandwidth to upload all my music to the service. Can I get some Fiber like Norway?
burk, what an ugly design.
Wow. Another online music locker. (/me goes back to sleep).
Here’s another software that lets you bypass the uploading step by serving your iTunes library right from your desktop machine. Free and without any kind of limits:
http://www.iwunes.com
I’m amazed by the sudden proliferation of online music lockers in recent months, but in the middle of all this talk of ‘new’ features people should go back and look at an old web 1.0 company called ‘myplay.com’.
* Upload your music to myplay
* login and listen to it from anywhere
* Share playlists with your friends
This company launched with these features in 1999 and died in 2002, it wasn’t until imeem launched in 2004 that we had another company attempt a similar thing.
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Great. It looks awesm. Looking for some more stuffs like that. Anyway thank you.
Ian Roger’s what?
An apostrophe in a *name*?