Music streaming service Project Playlist has 40 million users if you believe their home page, or around 10 million if you go by Comscore unique monthly visitors. Either way, it’s a lot. They’ve got a hot new CEO, raised a big round of financing, and finally signed a deal with a big label.
But they’re also in a very vulnerable position right now. Litigation with the other three labels continues, and they’ve been banned from both MySpace and Facebook after those labels threatened to sue them, too. Embedding music playlists on social networks is the key to Project Playlist’s continued growth, and that door has been closed.
And Project Playlist’s competitors have certainly noticed.
Legitimate music startups like LaLa and Imeem, who have deals with the major labels and also let users embed playlists onto the major social networks, are working on tools, we’ve heard, that will let Playlist users port their music lists over to the new services and embed them onto Facebook and MySpace. LaLa confirmed to me that they are working on such a tool.
If I were these services I’d try to cut an advertising deal with Facebook and MySpace that targets just those users that used to have Project Playlist playlists embedded on their profiles. I imagine they’d get a very nice conversion rate.
Users are fickle, don’t expect them to just wait things out as Project Playlist scrambles to get their label litigation settled and deals finalized. If those users see an easy way to get their favorite songs back on their profile, they’ll take it. And they may never go back to Project Playlist.
Update: Mixaloo says they’ve already released a tool that does this, see comments below.
For the last 15 years or so, the half-life of an MP3 search engine is approximately six months. Widgetization simply accelerated PP’s destiny.
As much as So Cal hubris has been destructive to a legitimate Media Web over the last decade, Nor Cal hubris is not far behind by my accounting.
It’s not surprising to see Project Playlist struggle, it’s surprising to see such smart people entangling themselves in its fail.
Wearing my Songbird hat, I sincerely hope all services will succeed. But as an industry vet of sorts, I’m dismayed to see poorly considered approaches continually revamped or repeated.
Interesting comment.
In the long term, you may monetize embed video contents to but i really wonder, how to monetize embed music players.
i attended the Plugandplay expo early this year and playlist was the winner.
in the short term all music will become free.
it will be kinda like using the old amfm radio receiver but this online radio is on steroids and has a brain.
PlayLocator – music matters
It comes down to accounting … Can anyone comment on the level of integration of Gracenote (”CDDB”) &/or Shazam in iTunes?
The leverage of transaction footprint is high, perhaps – yet, no Black Ice album art in the iTunes system (when asking it to find album art, to date at least) that appears yet – AC/DC not digital & Blsck Ice exclusivity issues with the Wal-Mart deal …
Wondering if that & the recent issues in p2p (Bitorrent recent financing/Joost surprise) are weighing in on the gatekeepers?
Our tool was released this evening – you can import your Playlist.com playlists here – http://www.mixa...m/iplaylist.php – you will need to be registered and logged in, but once you are, you can submit the url to your playlist and we will import/create a Mixaloo mix with the same tracks, order, and title for you. You can then embed anywhere you would like, including Facebook and Myspace.
If Playlist.com is failing to sustain its playlist on social network sites and perhaps itself, soon, and if Mixaloo is neither Lala nor Imeem, then why should I move my playlist to Mixaloo?
Mixaloo pulls in youtube content, no infringement issues.
If YouTube doesn’t infringe, then neither does Playlist. Its the exact same legal argument. However, when you are MySpace with your own music “solution”, its easy to ignore this fact and try to save a failed venture by shutting down a superior service.
Is VideoEgg going out of business too?
Project playlist sounds great, and it’s fantastic to create a playlist of your favorite music. But, if you want to discover more music, not just music, but movies, tv shows, books and videos, then check out this new startup Cruxle (http://www.cruxle.com). It recommends you across categories — that is if you like Radiohead, then you will find Movies, Books, TV Shows and Videos that you might like.
The interesting thing is they derive recommendations by mining conversations that happen in Social networks like MySpace. So you can find like-minded MySpace people in Cruxle. Pretty neat and interesting concept. Check it out, you wouldn’t regret.
so the moral of the story is to build your platform first with infringe content then get the users then get the deals later.
Yes thats the model. No one will negotiate with you if you have no leverage.
True, but a lawsuit and a pretty clearly infringing model leaves you with a poor BATNA.
You can’t spam a masterpiece!!
Inventor guy-
Mike,
I just don’t understand this copyright issues. They seem more political and business strategic than legal. EVERY song you can think of is on YouTube (videos too!) why are they immune to all these? I guess the playlist guys have to think fast.
I love P.Playlist use it all the time as my primary source of online music, I’d hate to see them go away
We have been allowing project playlist users (and users of other major music networks) to create a magazine around their music playlists for a while. You just enter your username at http://www.idiomag.com/
YouTube’s terms of service doesn’t allow someone to strip out the music (or audio) from a video to power another app. So the comment above from Mixaloo is seriously flawed. Furthermore, the ability to play YT videos (or in this case, the audio channel only) on a third party web site is controlled by the record labels through the YT embed functionality. If they switch that off, Mixaloo will go down with it. Rob’s comment is on the money (”I’m dismayed to see poorly considered approaches continually revamped or repeated.”). I recommend 8tracks as a playlist instead: 100% legitimate (= here to stay!), clever, and much better UI and experience.
…
it will be kinda like using the old amfm radio receiver but this online radio is on steroids and has a brain.