Chictini is a social network, launched just this fall, where people can submit fashionable items (clothes, accessories, art, and even electronics) found on the websites of online retailers. Members (“chicsters”) vote submitted items up or down, causing them to rise and fall, thus making the site like Digg but for trendy merchandise.
Chictini thinks that the expression of one’s taste in music will complement the expression of one’s taste in fashion, and has therefore decided to integrate SeeqPod functionality into user profiles. SeeqPod is an MP3 search engine, reviewed along with a couple others here, that allows you to stream (mostly copyrighted) music found around the web by its crawlers.
Now, Chictini users can search for music using SeeqPod within the Chictini site itself and add one song at a time to their profiles. The song will then show up on their profiles in the form of a SeeqPod widget that allows for instant playback.
As we mentioned in our previous coverage of SeeqPod, it’s unlikely that the labels have enough legal standing to win cases against the music search engines themselves, although there is a possibility that the engines could be held liable for contributory infringement. Chictini is evidently betting that their chances for legal repercussions are similarly very low, and probably even much lower.