Remember TotalMusic, the failed music initiative created by Sony BMG and UMG that was built from the start with the goal of serving as Facebook’s music platform (and was ultimately rejected by the social network)? Its assets were recently acquired by Project Playlist, the troubled music streaming startup that just lost its CEO to MySpace last month and has had lawsuits pending from the major record labels since late last year.
Playlist will apparently be leveraging some of the tools and API capabilities developed by TotalMusic during its Facebook courtship, but it’s still unclear how exactly these will be used. Much of TotalMusic’s appeal and innovation lay in its unique free song licensing scheme, which was going to offer Facebook free music streaming in exchange for user data and ad revenue. Playlist isn’t going to be able to get the same kind of licensing deals, which means this deal is primarily for TotalMusic’s technology (which has yet to be seen publicly) and personnel. And in more somber news, both companies will be losing “overlapping” employees in the process, with around a dozen people affected.
That said, the deal may indicate that things are looking up for Project Playlist’s legal battles – UMG was one of the intitial stakeholders in TotalMusic, and if they were somehow involved with the acquisition it may indicate that the record label is looking to play ball with Playlist. Warner would remain the lone holdout remaining on the lawsuit if that was the case (EMI, which was previously involved in the suit, decided to license its catalog to Playlist in March).
Playlist has also announced that it has closed publishing deals with Sony/ATV and EMI. The company had previously had streaming rights to these catalogs, and will now be able to sell these songs as well.
We recently acquired assets and employees from TotalMusic LLC, a digital catalog management and reporting system. This acquisition is an important platform that will allow us to host a streaming music service, help us with e-commerce solutions and provide a set of application programming interfaces that will be invaluable to us as we offer next generation digital music services to our users.
Today we are integrating the assets of TotalMusic into our Playlist operation. As a result we have to address some overlap in certain areas and let some employees go both from Playlist and Total Music. This is no reflection on the talent of the people we had to release, rather a responsibility we have to run a lean organization with no redundancies and clear lines of reporting. This often happens when two companies merge, but it is never easy.
On a positive note, we are very excited about the progress we are making. With the Total Music acquisition and our recent licensing agreements with Sony ATV and EMI Publishing, we are developing new features and services everyday that will form an even deeper bond with our 45 million loyal users and create new revenue opportunities for our company as well as our music content partners. More to come, watch this Space!!
Go Project Playlist! You can do it!
Hopefully this new music service, http://www.jamwee.com will be worth it. I’ve heard good things from an early beta tester.
these websites go through waaaay too much leagal mumbo jumbo
jam zzzzzz…..
That is very smart move for Project Playlist. Aside from acquiring the technology, it also helps to divert the possibility of future lawsuit by Sony BMG and UMG due to legal complication and ridicule arise from selling technology to a company that the music companies themselves accuse the former of music right infringement.
I have to say it is a interesting deal.
Article on Project Playlist Sue
http://www.reut...849315720080428
Yipee! I love Project Playlist. I’m glad they’re still alive and they have my full support!
The whole entire music industry needs a face lift, a new business model where the music sites and the labels can meet halfway, I’m paying so many liscensing fees quarterly it’s ridiculous. Just have to wait it out I guess, in a few more years the labels and major music outlets will be irrelevant as more artists start to realise they don’t need them anymore.
They really haven’t been called Project Playlist in over a year. They are just Playlist at http://www.playlist.com
I think that it is one of the easiest to use services out there. If they can license all the catalogs at a reasonable rate (and get the morons at Warner’s on board), this service has way more potential than any of the other legal services including Spotify.
Once that’s done, they get back up on MySpace (via a sweetheart deal with their former CEO – which is probably why they let him go anyway. What a smart strategy by Playlist – go take the job at MySpace, you’ll hook us up in a year or so!) and Facebook and Playlist builds up their traffic again, ad deals fall into place and it looks like the company that helps save the record industry.
Best of luck to Project Playlist. However, 1 troubled company, plus 1 more troubled company, doesn’t often equal success!