GigaOM » project playlist

Palm Pre Homebrew App of the Day– BlockChalk

James Kendrick — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 16:19:59 +0000

The Palm Pre homebrew app catalog is up to 197 programs and today’s pick is a program that was previously only available on the iPhone and the Android platform. BlockChalk is hard to describe– it is a sophisticated graffiti program that lets you leave notes for those who pass your way later. Users type in a short anonymous note about the surroundings and those who come by later can see what was written. Think of it as taking chalk to a wall or the sidewalk (thus, the name).

BlockChalk uses the integrated GPS function of the Pre so it handles the geo-tagging of the notes automatically. It’s a lot of fun and can be useful, especially in large cities. Imagine you enter a deli and are wondering what might be good. You check BlockChalk and discover that someone left a note declaring the chicken salad to be quite good. That’s pretty useful information that can provide a nice lunch experience.

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After Sony BMG, Project Playlist Signs Up EMI

Om Malik — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 18:12:26 +0000

Project Playlist, a Palo, Alto, Calif.-based service that allows you to create and share playlists, has signed up EMI Music, a move that will allow users access to EMI’s catalog. They previously ran afoul of record labels but seem to have made peace with them. Earlier this year, Project Playlist signed up the Sony BMG label. I like these kinds of socially aware playlist companies because they allow me to not only listen to my favorite tunes, but to discover new artists. (Related: More playlist startups.)

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Ad-Supported "Free" Music Plays On: SpiralFrog, Imeem, QTrax

Adena DeMonte — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 20:26:38 +0000

[qi:005] As Apple (APPL) and Amazon (AMZN) duke it out in the MP3 price war, music publishers are still trying to figure out how to cash in on a crowd that will go to great lengths to get its music for free.

Imeem, a San Francisco-based music discovery startup, said it has signed a content agreement with Sony BMG Music Entertainment that gives users access to the Sony(SNE)-Bertelsmann joint venture’s digital catalog of music and video for ad-supported, “free” streaming of these files.

The company, which competes with Project Playlist, makes a customizable music playlist that can be embedded into MySpace and Facebook profiles. This is its second deal with a major label; it inked a similar partnership with Warner Music Group (WMG) earlier this summer.

SpiralFrog, which has a partnership with Vivendi’s (V) Universal Music Group, also offers free music downloads, but of course there’s a catch (actually there’s about 20 catches).

Launched earlier this month after lengthy delays, SpiralFrog makes money through site ads, and then splits these profits with the music publisher.

The good: Users have access to over 800,000 MP3s from popular and lesser-known artists available for free download.

The bad: To keep these files playable, the user needs to sign in to the site once every 30 days. Downloading takes about 90 seconds per song, and SpiralFrog forces users to download songs one at a time so the user stays on the site awhile and has time to view all of those lovely ads.

The really bad: While SpiralFrog supports portable players, it doesn’t support iTunes (or Macs at all, for that matter) at this time.

Meanwhile, LTDnetwork’s legal peer-to-peer (P2P) service QTrax, which has yet to launch, has already signed deals with Universal, Sony/ATV, Warner Music Group, The Orchard, EMI Music Publishing and EMI Music, TVT Records, Go Digital, ASCAP and BMI. They plan to make money through advertising in a P2P client that helps users find legal content.

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Project Playlist's Gets $3M To Keep Experimenting

Adena DeMonte — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 22:57:45 +0000

Project Playlist calls itself a “social music experiment.” In other words, it’s just one of the many options available when it comes to adding an embeddable music player to MySpace or Facebook profiles. Its simple player lets users aggregate free MP3 files available on the Net and put them together in a widget that can be posted just about anywhere. This week the company even announced a version of Project Playlist for Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone.

The Beverly Hills, Calif.-based startup has raised $3 million in funding, according to PE Hub. We tried to contact the company to find out more about their Series A round, but to no avail.

Project Playlist makes some money through advertising on its site, and spends on “performance royalties” paid to performance rights organizations. These orgs, in turn, dole out undisclosed sums to songwriters and music publishers. The more their songs appear on playlists, the more they get paid.

Even though the company pays musicians and publishers, as with any music player, copyright is a serious concern. Project Playlist doesn’t host music content (it plays files hosted on third-party web sites), and claims it maintains no editorial oversight over what gets posted by its users.

iLike (the popular Facebook music discovery app) also aggregates external files, while Imeem has a growing, but limited amount of approved music content available to use in playlists.

Project Playlist’s site traffic has rocketed higher by nearly 2000 percent in the year since August 2006, according to this graph from Compete.com.

It’s hard to say which music player is the most popular overall, since iLike and others allow full use of their application directly through Facebook.

According to current stats from Facebook app traffic measurement tool Appsaholic, iLike is the most popular, with 789,329 daily active users, followed by Project Playlist, with 21,350 daily active users. Imeem has 9,005 daily active users.

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