Start-ups blur lines between radio, music swapping

A new generation of start-ups is taking a page from Apple Computer's iTunes playbook, allowing Net radio listeners to draw their programming at will from one another's hard drives.

At the head of a movement that could transform online radio, Live365 and start-up Grouper are the latest to blur these lines between Internet radio and online song-swapping, with an alliance aimed at turning the older companies' stable of amateur broadcasters into the hubs of peer-to-peer communities.

The model looks to Apple's iTunes software, which lets people on the same network, such as in a dorm or office building, listen to songs from one another's music collections. Grouper's peer-to-peer service lets people stream songs at will to one another over the open Internet.

News.context

What's new:
Grouper and Live365 are blurring the lines between Net radio and file-swapping, letting people listen to one another's music collections over the Net.

Bottom line:
The Net radio business is taking off again, and start-ups are pushing at boundaries that limit what Webcasters are legally able to do.

More stories on Net radio

The company's alliance with Live365 is helping extend an advanced vision of Net radio already being pioneered by Mercora, another peer-to-peer radio service. By letting groups of listeners tap into one another's music collections, the companies hope to come close to providing on-demand radio services, while abiding by the strict legal rules governing online broadcasting.

"It wasn't first thing on our mind, but we saw a way to enable the relationships between audiences and broadcasters to go beyond just the broadcast stations," said Grouper CEO Josh Felser.

The Live365 deal and others like it are signs that the Net radio business is shaking off the gloom of the dot-com crash and pushing strongly ahead. Innovation and investment is finally coming from the start-up level and from giants such as Clear Channel and Yahoo.

In part, that's an indication that digital music in general is booming, led by Apple's success with its iPod music player and iTunes digital song store. Online radio advertising is also finally taking off, following the decision of AOL, MSN, Yahoo and Live365 to sell advertising on their radio networks collectively.

Those successes have drawn the attention of giant companies that

[Not Bugged]

MyPlay did this years ago

MyPlay.com which no longer exists was basically an online storage locker for your MP3's. But they allowed you to make playlists and then share them with anyone and they automatically made the playlist comply with broadcasting rules. You would email the playlist to a friend and they could click on the link and it would stream. It was an awesome service. Then they got bought by BMG and that was the end of it.

[NWLB]

The tighter they squeeze.....

If it is free or if people can do it through multiple groups, I expect the idea will take off. On some level, people will find a way to swap music that doesnt allow the record labels to sue them. The basic nature of the internet means that somebody else will find a way to automate the process and make it easy enough to do on a large scale.

Im not commenting as to the ethics of downloading music, but I dont see how it will ever be stopped. People were dubbing tapes in dorms since reel-to-reel machines were state of the art.

What stops anybody from checking endless numbers of CDs out of a library and dubbing MP3s of them? Nothing. And with most of these MP3 players, iPods included, the sound doesnt have to be perfect. The harder the recording industry pushes, the closer they will get to just compelling people to make imperfect copies, which totally circumvent all the precious and pointless DRM the try to implement.

NWLB
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Watch out for that 'free' trial

Talk about your deceptive advertising practices! The free trial is for 5 days, regardless of which subscription type you select. However, when you go to cancel the subscription, you must do it 3 or more business days prior to the end of the free trial. And, it takes 3-4 business days for the cancellation to take affect. Therefore, the trial is effectively 1 day, after which your stuck. That means that if you signed up for 24 months you would be stuck with the entire amount.

Caveat Emptor!

Grouper is low quality

I can't believe this story neglected to mention that music-streaming from Grouper is set at a piddly 32kbps, far below what most people encode in their own music. I tried it for a while and I like the concept, but it's not at all for consistent listening to friends' music, more just to get a taste. It's like listening to a crappy AM broadcast.

This is FAAAR from original...

My company was working on this in 1999, had infrastructure started in Feb 2000. Investors only want immediate ROI. I've got about 80 other products/services that are 6 years ahead of the nearest competitor. Come on. And it still is shy of what I can do with it. Just needs funding.

[Larue]

Qnext does this without any restrictions....

Nothing is original about this concept and even better P2P music streaming service is offered in Qnext. Not only does Qnext allow unrestricted sharing, but the music streams can be set for either 64KB or Source quality on the stream. It is also completely free to use.