We’ve covered SeeqPod quite a bit here on TechCrunch. The San Francisco startup has been hard at work to develop a way to intelligently index media files on the Web to make them searchable online, and introduced an API which many other startups and projects made use of to power their own music, video and audio search engines. But despite the fact that its technology has always been pretty unique, the startup has had a rocky road up until now.
SeeqPod has always tried to avoid getting sued by pointing to the DMCA, and arguing that it merely indexes media from across the Internet (much of it not copyright-cleared) but does not effectively host any files and thus should be protected from litigation. Regardless, music labels in particular were not pleased with how SeeqPod and many of the web services using its technology as an underlying foundation were discovering and streaming songs on the net. The record labels sued, Seeqpod filed for bankruptcy, and then put itself up for sale.
Did anyone bite? Right now the site is down, with a message saying it is “cocooned for metamorphosis…” The word “metamorphosis” links to Microsoft Search, which could mean that it is in talks with Microsoft to sell the company, its technology assets or the link could just reflect wishful thinking on Seeqpod’s part.
Microsoft would most likely be interested in Seeqpod’s underlying technology and could deploy it in a much different manner than Seeqpod. It would also be in a better position to settle the lawsuits with the music industry quickly.
Did SeeqPod Finds A Savior In Redmond?
^^^^^
Erick: Proof-read before posting. Thanks.
#2 – It’s “Seeqpod”, not “SeeqPod” (according to Crunchbase)
Goodness guys, techies don’t have time for these secretary level nitpicks.
Well the word “cocooned” links to nasa which by this logic means the US government is about to socialize online music search.
I think it’s more symbolic. The movie appears to be from a small probe called Huygens that is approaching Saturn’s largest moon Titan. Titan is an interesting moon because it could be a host for ‘microbial extraterrestrial life’.
So….Seeqpod is a small company, approaching something large (like Microsoft) to stay alive.
@John I agree.
If it linked to Google, there wouldn’t be any news about Google possibly acquiring it.
Whoever it is, I want the site to come back online. They probably don’t need that much cash.
didnt you report that they were offering their source code for $5k???
what assets?
This was a defensive threat to the RIAA to back off or suffer 100’s of clones.
I know MS reads TC so I will say this to them:
Buy Seeqpod, I tell you why:
You can afford to pay the RIAA a yearly blanket license if you append this to your zune marketplace deal.
Launch “Zune Music Live” and let zillions of people use the seeqpod service and offer users the option to buy tracks to transfer to Zune directly from the browser.
Here is the good part. The advertising launch pad you are looking for is right here, you will sell a ton of it.
Build an embedded Silverlight Seeqpod playlist widget that other websites can place, and include 2 areas for advertising displays that include an unique identifier which allows self serve advertisers to direct advertising for.
I don’t know why I am writing this as it may come back to bite me, but I just think for such a big company to consider such a move sure to be an instant hit, I can’t be selfish to not want to see it happen.
Indexing by content for multimedia files, you must store the original file, because it is unsearchable if you don’t, so I am not surprised here that Seeqpod is in trouble for doing what they’re doing?
Erik said…
Microsoft would most likely be interested in Seeqpod’s underlying technology and could deploy it in a much different manner than Seeqpod.
I seriously doubt that Microsoft doesn’t know (or perhaps in development of the same thing as Seeqpod) already the Seeqpod technology. They do have some specialist R&D dudes who specialize in DSP (digital signal processing) pattern recognitions and this is what multimedia contents are (digital signals), ie to index digital signals, archive and made those searchable (retrieval). These files are different to textual-based information, because they have to be pre-process even before anything else has to be done.
I said…
…you must store the original file,…
Correction to what I said above. You need access to the original file, however you can decompose the original file into features by using a pre-processing technique/algorithms (there are many of those) called Feature Extraction or FE for short. Now the FE file is different from the original multimedia file that it extracted features from, so in this way (if this is what Seeqpod is using), they’re not violating anything I guess).
Seeqpod’s web page changed again: clicking the Seeqpod logo will bring you to Bing.com….isnt that interesting? And there’s a new featured artist and fancy tag cloud now.