RSSMP3tunes Debuts Online Music Storage
By Nate Mook | Published November 30, 2005, 1:13 PM
MP3.com founder Michael Robertson is reviving an old service with a new twist as part of his new venture called MP3tunes. The company on Wednesday launched Oboe, an online music storage locker that offers syncing and streaming capabilities. But is Robertson setting himself up for another attack by the RIAA?
The new service is designed to rid users of having to carry around their music around wherever they go. "It makes more sense to safely store your music online and sync it or stream it to all the places you listen to music, which is exactly what Oboe makes possible," Robertson says.
Oboe first surfaced in October, when Robertson announced he had hired Jon Lech Johansen, the 21 year-old programmer who became known as DVD Jon following his release of DeCSS to bypass the copyright protection on DVD movies. He said Johansen would help build the new service and "bring music into the 21st century."
For a $39.95 USD yearly fee, Oboe users receive unlimited storage and Oboe Sync software to automatically upload music to the service. Customers can then log into the Oboe Locker Web site, which features an AJAX enabled application-like interface, to stream music at 192kbps.
A free version of Oboe allows streaming at 56kbps, but users must upload music from the Web rather than with Oboe Sync.
The site enables users to create playlists, label music, adjust volume and skip tracks all from within a Web browser. Plug-ins for Firefox and iTunes can be used to access Oboe directly from the applications. Music stored in Oboe appears in the iTunes library, and can be synced both directions.
With the Firefox plug-in, music links from the Web can be directly "sideloaded" into the Oboe library for saving and streaming.
However, it's not yet clear how the recording industry will respond to Oboe. Back when he was the CEO of MP3.com, Robertson launched an online music service that enabled users to stream music from the Web after confirming they owned the CD. The RIAA sued MP3.com shortly thereafter, alleging it was "in reckless disregard of the law" and had no license for the music it was storing.
This time around, Robertson has made a few changes thanks to the ubiquity of broadband. Because users do all the uploading, he says MP3tunes is not responsible for making sure the content is legal.
In addition, customers can only listen to their own songs, meaning Oboe is simply serving as a storage provider just like Google's Gmail service or AOL's Xdrive.
Still, once music is uploaded there is nothing to prevent users from sharing passwords or allowing others to sync their collection. And the RIAA isn't known for being lenient when it comes to possible enablers of copyright infringement.
I think this is a great idea as well. Not sure that they are doing anything illegal but who knows. The RIAA may just sue them over and over to financially ruin them. I tried the free account and can't get the software to synch It just hangs on analyzing. Also I wonder if the backup feature allows you to restore the files you sent in their original format or if they get converted when you send them up. I found nothing on their site reguarding this. I emailed their support, said 3 to 5 business days for reply. We'll se.
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|The RIAA will more than likely have this shutdown, and I don't understand why. Sure, there's the wanton possibility that it will enable people to illegally share their music to others...but for crying out loud, anything can be exploited if they have the determination and the know-how. What I find amusing is that they will attack a site like this, but they won't go after the Grouper program, which is a HUGE hotbed of illegally-obtained and traded warez, music, and movies. Of course, you attack something like that, and soon they'll start attacking the makers of software to connect to IRC channels and newsgroups. Sigh...piracy sucks, I know, but don't stifle technology, especially if it has good, legitimate uses.
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|As a tad of a conspiracy theorist, i've suspected Grouper for actually mapping and reporting the stuff people share with it. Why? Well out of maybe 50-60 people I knew on Grouper, 10 got sued. What are the chances of that? The groups are private and needed authorization, so it's not like it was public. And these people didn't use other P2P software - so how? I promptly removed it after that. Could be some huge coincidence, or they could have gotten wind some other way - maybe a spy? But either way, I don't take any chances. I do share alot of anime, not because I want to steal it or anything, but it's hard to find places to rent anime and I don't want the netflix/blockbuster online deals so I get em and watch em and if I really like, I buy em. God forbid I get sued for that....
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|According to the RIAA, you must be a communist, terrorist, or career criminal. You're safe right now, though, they're tending to focus on retired war veterans, old grandfathers, and single parents with 3 kids.
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|I think this is a GRAND idea and I hope the RIAA doesn't f it up. For a long time Itunes and most music users have one MAJOR problem. No way to backup their purchased music - not without wasting their hard drive space on redundancy (copying and keeping the music on 2 separate hard drives), or buying a say, 40-60gb MP3 player and having it store one set of music and having another on a drive). This is scary....because if you lose your mp3 player and your luck has it that on that same day, your hard drive dies. You're screwed. People who buy 50-100 dollars in music probably don't care....but over the coarse of 3-4 years, the general user would have purchased a good 1 to 2 grand of music. The audiophile probably doubles that. Imagine losing that money when your music goes bye-bye?
Virgin currently did something awesome with their program....as long as you have your subscription you can redownload your purchased music, anytime, anyplace....that essentially is insurance that you'll never lose your money. You don't even have to be a paying member, but once you have an account and purchased from their music store, you can get your music back. This mp3tunes would be an excellent supplement or alternative to virgin - for those people who still use napster/itunes/yahoo/musicmatch, for 40 a year you can back up all your music so that if God forbid something happens to your music collection, you have a way to get it back. I guess in this case, the only question is how to upload licensed music....or if you can. Technically you should be able to do whatever with music you own, but I don't know how the drm in those programs work.
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