Sonific, an online music playing servuce similar to Pandora and Seeqpod, is to close May 1 as the company was unable to obtain licensed music rights in a way that made the service viable.

Gerd Leonhard, Co-Founder & CEO writes:

1) There are countless startups providing access to any and all music streams without any license whatsoever. However, when we approached the major record label decision makers in order to obtain licenses for some of the music in their catalogs we have routinely faced demands for very large cash advances and fixed per-stream minimum payments, pressure to give them ‘free’ company equity, and requirements of utterly bizarre usage restrictions. It seems that the industry’s major stakeholders still prefer this turf to remain unlicensed rather than to allow real-life, workable and market-based solutions to emerge by working with new companies such as Sonific. This is not the way forward.

2) We therefore had to realize that a company that wants to provide interactive streaming music services must either a) risk the constant complaints of their users, due to the lack of hit content b) proceed to use any and all music (this is routinely done by allowing users to upload their own MP3s) without the required licenses, and therefore be at the total mercy of the record labels at some point in time, and c) build a huge audience very quickly, based on having the content available - permission or not -, and then very quickly sell themselves to a large company that will take care of placating the labels while the money is plenty and the pockets are deep.

Unfortunately we don’t like any of these choices.

Sonific joins the TechCrunch Deadpool

thanks to Andrew Watson for the tip

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MyPlayList, a bootstrapped startup from Agentbleu, a Englishman living in France, combines streamed music and Flickr for a free music service that delivers visual as well as musical abundance.

MyPlayList uses the XSPF xml format to combine the images from the Flickr image sharing service, with music that is hosted across the internet, and similar to Seeqpod does not host or cache any of the music to avoid any copyright issues.

To use, users enter the name of any band or singer, and the system automatically compiles a Flickr - music combination, or suggests an existing playlist if one is already in the system. Registered users can create custom playlists and the site offers various embedable versions as well.

We covered GrooveShark’s new player yesterday, and MyPlayList works in the same space (along with Seeqpod). The visuals delivered by MyPlayList is a nice touch, particularly in full screen mode. Mark the site down as another free music provider that may challenge the likes of the play five times then buy Last.fm and the geo-retarded Pandora.

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Update: It appears as though Global Pandora has been shut down since this post went live…deadpooled until further notice.

I haven’t been able to test it myself, since visitors from within the United States are redirected to Pandora itself. But a new site called Global Pandora (recently written up by TechCrunch France) apparently allows you to access Pandora from anywhere in the world.

As we covered last May, Pandora was forced to block international users from its streaming music service because there are no international laws equivalent to Section 114 of the DMCA that allow Pandora to pay rights holders for the usage of their content without signing deals with them first. Listeners in the UK were the latest to have the Pandora plug pulled on them, just after Duncan was compelled to write a how-to guide for accessing Pandora and other blocked sites internationally.

While international users can set up proxy servers or VPN connections to listen to Pandora, many less technical users will find a simple website like Global Pandora much more accessible. If you’re a reader from outside the US, give it a try and let us know how it works for you in the comments.

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Pandora is to block users in the United Kingdom from January 15 after failing to obtain a reasonable licensing agreement.

Pandora first started blocking users outside the United States in May 2007 due to licensing issues, but had continued streaming into the UK under the belief that they would be able to obtain an affordable license to continue doing so.

UK Pandora users received an email that included the following:

.As you probably know, in July of 2007 we had to block usage of Pandora outside the U.S. because of the lack of a viable license structure for Internet radio streaming in other countries. It was a terrible day. We did however hold out some hope that a solution might exist for the UK, so we left it unblocked as we worked diligently with the rights organizations to negotiate an economically workable license fee….Pandora will stop streaming to the UK as of January 15th, 2008

The stupidity of the RIAA continues to have little bounds, particularly when a decision like this forces a US company to stop streaming outside of the United States, and yet American owned companies based in the United Kingdom (like Last.fm) are free to stream music anywhere. The RIAA is costing the United States jobs and investment by regulations that will force innovative companies like Pandora in the future to only set up overseas, or never set up at all.

Readers in the United Kingdom (or anywhere outside of the US) looking for ways of continuing to listen to Pandora can read this article on how it can be done.

(via Download Squad)

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I can remember when OpenHulu launched thinking that the name was nearly false advertising; essentially it provided access to Hulu content away from Hulu, but only to those in the United States. Veoh and MSN have since followed suit and provide Fox and NBC content from Hulu on their sites, but like OpenHulu it still remains IP blocked to those outside of the United States (and possibly Canada).

Web based proxies have been around for a long time, but most don’t work with video, and even those that do don’t provide decent enough bandwidth from which to view content from sites such as Hulu.

One alternative service that has been in use for business for a long time now are Virtual Private Networks (VPNs). VPN’s offer a secure pipe from where you can access the web, and in turn disguise the location of the user on the end connection.

There’s quite a few paid VPN services available, many at reasonable cost ($5-$20/ mth were a few I found on Google) but one service doing the rounds at the moment offers a VPN connection for free.

HotSpot Shield is a plugin for Windows or OS X that offers a free VPN service. There is a catch, it rather annoyingly adds a banner ad to the top of every page you visit, but at the ultimate price point of $0 most people will be able to live with it…well, at least whilst getting access to sites that were currently blocked, and the ads can be switched off on each page, but only after they have appeared.

Does it work? From Western Australia I’m currently listening to Pandora for the first time since May (still a great service.) Earlier this weekend I caught up with a new Simpsons episode, complete with ads from Hulu, then watched archival footage of the Nixon Resignation just for good measure. The only thing it didn’t work on was Joost which told me I should stop using a proxy…no matter, the blocked stuff is mostly on CBS.com anyway, and yes CBS.com works as well.

The speed wasn’t always great, but it was enough to watch video, varying between 600kbps and 1.3mbps on my 2mbps Cable connection.

I hesitated in writing this post because the more people who use services such as HotSpot Shield, the more chances we might end up killing them, or worse still Hulu and others might get smart and find ways of blocking it. Even if we lose HotSpot Shield today I’m betting given the strong demand services like this will have that others will offer VPN services as well, and hopefully free ones at that. At least I hope so, now I have Pandora again I’m really going to struggle if I’m forced to give it up again

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Tel Aviv, Israel based MeeMix, which we first covered in August, is kicking-off the New Year by moving their taste-predicting Internet radio service from closed to open Beta.

Internet radio is already a very crowded space dominated by entrenched startups like Last.fm and Pandora. Smaller players and recent entrants such as SpiralFrog, Jango and Slacker are not increasing the breathing room. MeeMix wants its share of the pie, too, and is keeping its crosshairs focused on the U.S. market and its dominant revenue potential.

MeeMix’s public beta launch is marked by the addition of new features:

• Meeps: Comment-based conversations users can have regarding a song, album or artist.
• Station Home: Every MeeMix station now has a dedicated page allowing users to interact in its context and shape its playlist.
• Mee Feeds: This is basically MeeMix’s version of Facebook’s News Feed. The feed indicates songs favorited, stations rated, friends added, etc.
• Mee Journey: Users can see other members’ public log or “journey” of actions in MeeMix.
• Station Gift: Users can now send other members a station as a gift. The station is then the “property” of the recipient who can customize it without affecting the original station.
• Twitter Integration: Users can update their Twitter accounts with songs they’ve listened to, their favorite stations, etc.

MeeMix claims to have doubled its music catalog, but a search for my personal favorites ‘John Coltrane’ and ‘Miles Davis’ came-up empty. The same searches on Jango and Slacker both came-up positive.

I would like to have seen the addition of “genre” to the channel creation wizard which is still limited to artist and song. A widgetized player also would have been a welcome addition, especially the desktop kind.

In my original post, I hypothesized that licensing its engine could become MeeMix’s core business. Looks like this might not be far fetched as the company says they have been approached by a mobile operator for the purpose of powering a taste-based cellular music streaming service. The company has also shared with me some interesting offline deals on the horizon that should keep MeeMix’s potential on a positive note for 2008. We’ll post another update soon. In the meantime, let us know how you think MeeMix compares to the competition.

Update: MeeMix also sent out an email to some users today saying that they will be discontinuing the service in Israel for now due to licensing issues (Thanks Orli):

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I have a special place in my heart for music streaming site Pandora. It was one of the first startups profiled on TechCrunch, back in the summer of 2005.

Pandora creates radio stations for users based on input on the songs they like and don’t like. Over time it learns about what you like and tends to play exactly what you are looking for. But it also plays new music that it thinks you will like - I’ve discovered a few new bands from listening to the service. It is usually playing in the background when I blog. In short, I think Pandora is just about perfect in its current form.

I imagine, though, that Pandora has a long term goal of achieving a liquidity event on par with Last.fm’s $280 million sale to CBS earlier this year. And to do that, they seem to think that they need to be a lot more like that service.

Pandora is releasing a batch of new features tonight under the name “Pandora Extras.” They are saying “listening is just the start” (Frankly, I think it’s just enough). The new features are starting to make the service look more and more like Last.fm. They include:

• make friends with other Pandora users (it’s a social network!)
• recommendations of new artists and songs based on what you are hearing
• points you to other Pandora listeners who have similar tastes
• 100 new “finely tuned genre stations”

Two of the new features are clearly designed to make Pandora more like Last.fm (recommendations based on what others are listening to, and creating a social network). The second bullet above is a way to branch out from a given radio station, and I like it. I’m indifferent to the new pre-made radio stations.

As long as Pandora doesn’t screw up the core listening experience, I’m with them. But if they dilute that experience because they feel they need to follow the current trend of turning everything into a social network, I will be the first to bail on them.

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Yahoo, as well as Pandora, MTV, Real/Rhapsody and many others are honoring the “day of silence” today in protest of the ridiculous new royalty rates for Internet radio stations.

The big music labels have lobbied to get the U.S. government to really stick it to Internet radio stations, when terrestrial radio stations pay nothing to play songs and Satellite providers pay a greatly reduced rate.

There is little Internet radio stations can do to fight back except protest, and just about everyone is on board for a day-long shut down today, June 26, 2007.

But not Last.fm, as we previously reported.

Is this a result of their recent acquisition by a huge U.S. media conglomerate, or was it simply a decision made “long ago” not to participate? See Last.fm’s defense here, and you make the call.

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Pandora made a number of announcements tonight at a press/user event at the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco, which we covered earlier. Deals with Sonos and Sprint were announced that bring Pandora Internet radio into the home and to mobile devices.

They also made a pre-announcement, however, of an upcoming Wifi music player to be built by SanDisk and powered by Zing. The working prototype that CTO Tom Conrad demo’d tonight was physically similar to the Sansa Connect device launched last month with Yahoo, although it was slightly longer and thinner. The Sansa Connect device is also powered by Zing.

Few details were revealed, such as whether the device would include a hard drive. Including a hard drive would add significant cost to the product, although it would also allow music caching for periods when the user was outside of wifi coverage. They could also bundle a service that allowed users to purchase and download songs that the like, although this would also require a partnership with a third party music service.

Screen shots below. I had a few minutes to play with the device myself, but the pictures I took with my camera phone were a mess. My goal is to get a few of these to give away to TechCrunch and CrunchGear readers in the near future, even if I have to break into Zing’s offices and borrow them myself. Photo credit for bottom image goes to Brian Caldwell (his blog is here).

Pictures below. Click on top image for larger view.

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Music streaming service Pandora has had its ups and downs over the last two years since launching. People love to listen to their personalized radio stations that get more and more tailored as you tell it what you like and don’t like. But recent changes to the royalty rates they must pay the RIAA for playing music over the Internet will be going up drastically in the coming years. And licensing complications have led them to block out all non-U.S. listeners.

Tonight, however, Pandora and its users are celebrating. At a 7 pm meeting for press at the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco, they just announced a bunch of new features:

Pandora For Sprint

In their first mobile deal, Pandora is offering to stream radio stations on a number of Sprint handsets via pre-installed or downloaded software (take your Sprint phone browser to Pandora.com and you will be prompted to download the client). This is free for 30 days. After that you must have a Pandora premium account, which costs $3/month (this also removes ads from Pandora.com when you listen there).

Pandora For Sonos

Sonos now supports Pandora, so you can stream Pandora music through your normal home sound system. Sonos has been aggressive about getting deals done with partners. They launched with Rhapsody last year, and announced support for Microsoft DRM earlier this year - meaning music from AOL Music Now, MTV Networks’ URGE, Napster, Wal-Mart, Yahoo! Music and the Zune Marketplace now play on Sonos devices.

The State of Pandora

Pandora has also redesigned its website to better integrate the listening and community features. The company says they now have 6.9 million registered listeners who have played 4.7 billion songs and voted up or down half a billion times. This makes them, they say, the third largest Internet radio station in the world. They play 94% of their entire catalog every day, so they are dipping far into the long tail of music.

Pandora also invited some of their heaviest users to the event tonight. On average, they say, their heavy users listen to Pandora for 18 hours/week.

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