Google, Chrome and Songza’s shiny free music
September 3rd, 2008 @ 13:30
Posted by: John
Today Google released their own free browser called “Chrome” to compete with Firefox and Explorer. I loaded it and it works great. Firefox is fast but Chrome is even faster and looks really clean. Firefox 3.0 (which has had years to get where it is) is still better for most people right now but this beta release of Chrome is already close at one day old and may end up being the best. If fast is what you want (and you don’t use any special add-ons that customize Firefox) it might be better for you right now.
But what I wanted to show was this thing called Songza. I had somebody point out this article: “Songza Rocks the College Scene”. We’ve all seen a lot of these MP3 aggregaters but this one is getting a following and is different because, among other sources, it searches YouTube and separates the MP3s out of the video. They’re searching (crawling) parts of the Internet, and I think maybe MySpace pages, too, and indexing songs making them available through one quick search and then they’re playable instantly. Some, of course not all but some, people then start a recording program and capture them, and they think it’s legal because they went that extra step and didn’t directly download an MP3. Like search for Glenn Allan and someone can record the stream for each of the songs on his record for free. Of course most the Tejas hits that I’ve worked on and promoted for 12 years are on there. People will say “you can record radio” but it doesn’t matter it’s still not legal to take a song “in any manner that is not authorized by the copyright holder”. Or to aid in that process. You don’t have to be in the bank, if you’re the getaway driver you’re in like the rest. YouTube is owned by Google and so this may be another example of them being pulled deeper into the middle of the intellectual property battle. Here’s the part that’s worth reading from that article:
“It’s clever. But is this free music feast actually legal? Songza pays publishing rights organizations like BMI and ASCAP for the rights to play each song, and tries to recoup these costs through advertising and the commissions it earns from referring customers to sites like Amazon.com, where they can buy tracks. Mr. Robbin says unlike Seeqpod, Songza is only turning the query over to the Google-owned YouTube, which has relationships with the music studios. He says Songza focus is on its nifty, simple user-interface, and that “our primary mission is to help users discover new music in a way that stimulates revenue for content creators.” It’s not clear whether the labels will buy this distinction, particularly if college students keep boosting Songza’s visibility.
But Songza’s more immediate problem comes from Google itself. By effectively stripping out the video from music videos, Songza is violating YouTube’s terms of service. A new version of the site, coming in the next month, will include video.”
Record labels feel, and this is true, that this kind of thing isn’t radio because it lets people find specific songs, even the whole album, at any time. Listening at any time is ownership, it’s what you get, it’s what you pay for when you buy a record. Also, it’s just one easy step away from recording them.
But it’s changed and changing more everyday. It’s one more drain on our label business but I’m a pacifist in this, I’m not going to get worked up about it because the horse is out of the barn. His iPod is full and he’s history. Plus, in the bigger picture, I think music was once free and will be free again…. when everybody who was just in it for the money clears out. The music label business had a short run between Thomas Edison and Napster. In “web speak” Edison’s original record label “monetized” recording and MP3s started the process of de-monetizing it. Technology started corporate control of music and technology ended it. And that’s that. It’s pretty much all be over but the crying. Everybody better learn how to entertain 25 people at a go and be paid with a sandwich. But that’s a separate issue from whether it’s legal or not. Under today’s copyright laws, recording off Songza is not legal even if BMI and ASCAP are paid. They aren’t the copyright holders of the recording, the record labels are.
But the separating the audio out of YouTube videos is, at a minimum, very sneaky because I don’t think musicians posted their YouTubes with that expectation. Yes, they posted their YouTube for promotion but they may not have expected it to end up on somebody’s iPod instead them buying it. Is it kinda like drawing them into being part of the MP3 piracy of their own songs?
September 3rd, 2008 14:57
what about this