Seems like a pretty silly thing to me: why EMI thinks that online storage of music files is a problem. The funny thing is that they go after little mp3tunes.com. Sure Michael Robertson continually pokes the labels, that is a good reason for them. It certainly isn’t the money, the service is hardly thriving. In fact, the other online music storage companies have disappeared. Anywhere.fm was purchased recently and Ezmo shut down. Neither had a big following. If EMI really thought storage was bad and wanted it to stop, then they should go after AOL’s XDrive, Apple’s .mac, or Microsoft’s new Skydrive, or Amazon S3 (back end for Anywhere.fm). We at MediaMaster have not heard from them either. All of the above have big “My Music” folders at the top level of them, that would seem to indicate that people place their music files in them

A label going after one high profile small company sends shudders through the small business world. Venture funds run screaming from media startups that actually touch content. Knowing they have to maintain a huge legal slush fund for the possibility that there will a lawsuit is reason enough to not fund innovative little companies that deliver what consumers want. This is storage of something most users do own, the DMCA rules allow for takedown of accounts that are known to be illiegal, why not use that system, that’s how it was designed. Assuming that everyone is bad and has illegal files hardly seems like a way to regain trust of consumers.

And consumers do want these services. I would bet there more than a million customers spread across these storage locker sites. Maybe look at the world a little differently, treat these services as subscription sites that can work. Instead of 2 million tracks owned by the labels, expand it the other tracks that aren’t on that big list, and get paid for a service with truly unique offerings. Users will pay, and the labels can make some money too.

If I buy a hard drive to back up my files at home, there is not much difference. If I then share that hard drive in my home, that is arguably family ownership of content. NAS devices are now very popular as well and beg to be connected for outside access. You still would only access your own files, since your Quicken files are somewhere on that drive as well. Why don’t they sue Seagate, Hitachi, Western-Digital, and any other drive maker. Oh, right, they tried that; to levy a tax on all iPods and mp3 players that would pay for their content that all users have stolen.

They also have to admit that the old days of billion dollar returns are gone. Welcome to the world of razor thin margins that every other industry in the world has learned to deal with over the last decade. Seems like plenty of business thrive still. In fact, an industry that has practically no cost of goods sold should be able to do more than thrive…

Hello MediaMaster users!  It has been a long time since we have updated the blog, in fact, since December!

We have been making some changes and have been slow to update the forums.  We are catching up with those now and also responding to direct support emails as well.  We have made some updates and bug fixes to the site and have a new list of projects to work on.  There are some known issues with Vista 64 (who doesn’t have issues with that), but we have most other common OS’s under control.  Localization is looming on the near horizon.

We are growing steadily and version 2 has been very well recieved.  We have noticed that some of our competition is disappearing or morphing.  Ezmo has announced they will shut down.  Mp3Tunes is still there, with few changes, but lots of commentary.  Anywhere.fm was purchased by imeem.  Lala has yet to launch their revamped product.  It seems that the locker notion is becoming popular just as the early sites are slowing/shutting down.  The record industry seems to be warming to them as well and it’s about time.People store everything else online, why not your music?  We think we have the best system for it and think that your music should be fully accessible instead of locked away in some online backup system.  The whole point of the cloud is access, not a dark closet to safely store things that are on your hard drive.

 <RANT>

In fact, given Microsoft’s latest announcement about Windows Home Server (news), would you feel safe storing anything on an unreliable system THAT WAS DESIGNED AS RELIABLE HOME BACKUP!!!

</RANT>

We have published an API which should allow outsiders to make the widgets they want.  We are looking for some developers out there who’d like to help out the community.  Widgets we are getting requests for currently are a Vista sidebar, a  Slimserver plug-in,  Firefox plugins, and perhaps a Songbird plug-in if that ever gets finished.  These are all now possible for our more technical users to write and distribute.  We’ll try to put up some sample code, but many of you already know what to do with an XML schema.  The JAXB jar file is also available for Java programmers.

It’s been a big week at MediaMaster as we unveiled a brand new MediaMaster player experience. We’ve set out to create the best music experience on the web for accessing, listening and sharing your music collection. Our new player is a big step in that direction. We think we’re on to something big here!

Stop by www.mediamaster.com and log into your account to see why we’re so fired up.

A few of the key pieces of the new MediaMaster experience include:

• New Player. Entirely new player interface and design. All in an easy to use web based flash player.
• New Views. Many new ways to organize, view and sort your entire music collection.
• New File Formats. Support for many new music file formats you have been asking for including FLAC and OGG.
• New Community. New community environment to listen to other users’ radio stations, send invites to become MediaMaster friends, and vote for top stations.
• New Uploader. Improved uploader making it even easier to add your entire music collection.

Some of our team’s favorite new features include:

• Personalize your MediaMaster player skin. Click on preferences to add your own background image for your player.
• Publish your entire MediaMaster collection or radio station to any site or blog. Select “Publish” in the Options menu to get your simple HTML code.
• Personalize your song views. From the song view, right click on the column headings and choose your own columns to sort your collection however you want.
• Easy clean up of your song tags and album art. Right click at any time to edit track information or select album art.

We hope you love using the service as much as we do. Our inspiration to build the best music experience on the web starts with the tremendous feedback we get from the MediaMaster community. Stop by the MediaMaster forum to let us know your thoughts.

If you like what you see, invite friends to start their own MediaMaster collections. We are busy spreading the word but need your help to continue growing the MediaMaster community.

Keep rockin’

The MediaMaster Team

Your Music Anywhere!

We just announced the availability of streaming music from your MediaMaster collection to Palm Treo and Windows mobile phones.

Check out the full press release here.

Palm Treo owners can stream music to your phones immediately. Windows Mobile owners will need to install free streaming software available here.

Go ahead give a test run and post comments on your experience in the MediaMaster Forum.

___

SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–MediaMaster.com, the popular online music service that lets members access their music collections anywhere, today announced support for streaming music playback of consumers’ personal collections to a broad range of mobile phones. As of today, MediaMaster offers millions of Windows Mobile phone and Palm Treo owners free streaming of their personal music collections anywhere they have cellular service.

Accessing your entire music collection via your mobile phone is easy:

1. Create a free account at http://www.mediamaster.com

2. Upload your songs or albums. MediaMaster supports instant uploading of iTunes libraries.

3. Visit http://www.mediamaster.com/mobile from your mobile phone.

4. Click on your favorite playlist.

Palm Treos will stream music immediately. Windows Mobile phones owners can install free 3^rd party software available at http://blog.mediamaster.com/windows-mobile

“MediaMaster is all about ‘Your Music Anywhere’ and today we make this vision a reality for millions of mobile phone owners worldwide,” said MediaMaster co-Founder Neil Day. “By storing their music at http://www.mediamaster.com, mobile phone owners can stream any of their songs, albums and playlists anywhere they have a data connection — at the gym, in the car or even at a party.”

A few weeks ago Robert Scoble came in to talk with us about MediaMaster. We had a great conversation which you can see in its entirety through the link below. In the demo section you’ll see our current system and a preview of the new version we’ll be releasing in November.

http://scobleizer.com/2007/10/24/future-of-home-entertainment/

Check it out!

We love hearing from the growing number of loyal MediaMaster.com fans. It inspires us to create the best music experience on the web.

Over the past weeks we ran a survey to find out how you use MediaMaster and what you’d like to see in the future. We heard from over 700 of you! The responses were amazing — a huge thanks to each of you who responded.

To make things interesting we gave away one year eMusic subscriptions to three lucky survey respondents. Congrats to the winners (drumroll please)… Lefso, Motionbug, Dmal

Here are some of our favorite survey responses:

• “The concept ‘My Music In The Sky’ is brilliant !!”
• “I love the ability to listen to my music anywhere. It’s what MediaMaster is all about, and that’s what I use it for. Awesome stuff!”
• “It’s my music when and where I want to listen or share it with others.”
• “I love that I can upload my music, do my own radio station, get it up on my website and share it with my friends!”

And some survey results (you guys like us!)

• 80% of respondents will DEFINITELY or PROBABLY recommend MediaMaster to friends (Please do!!!)
• 85% of respondents gave MediaMaster an A or B rating

We’re thrilled you love using the service as much as we do. If you’re impressed, tell friends to get their music collections online at MediaMaster.com.

Rock on!

If you’ve looked at MediaMaster in the last few days, you’ve noticed that we’ve updated the site again. The response to our MyRadio functionality has been just awesome, and we’ve decided to make it much easier to explore all the cool stations that people are creating.

On the home page, you’ll find a short list of radio stations that we think are worth checking out. You can play them right from the home page, or go check out more details. If you register, you can tune in to them with any internet radio tuner.

We’ve also released a radio directory page called “The MediaMaster Spotlight”. You can check out radio stations that people have put together. If you like them, be sure to leave them a “Thumbs Up”. You can check out the Spotlight here.

Finally, I’m really excited to tell you about our latest cool tool. We’ve just released MediaMaster Radio for Yahoo! widgets. We know people love their desktop widgets, and we wanted to give you a great way to connect MediaMaster with your desktop. You can install the widget from the Yahoo Widget Gallery here.

Incidentally, there’s some really cool stuff on MediaMaster Radio. Borisbolo has created a mind-bending station of musical mash-ups. Its currently my favorite. Check it out here.

Well, actually, 10,057,527…and climbing quickly….

I’d like to pause for a second and reflect on this. That’s a LOT of music - somewhere around 76 years worth of listening. A lifetime of music.

This milestone is cause for celebration! We’ve always been very excited about the ideas behind MediaMaster, and we’re jazzed other people are too. Thanks to all of you for joining, uploading a ton of great music, and helping to spread the word. We also LOVE the feedback and participation from the community. So, please keep it coming - it inspires us!

if you’re not already using our forum, please check it out:

http://forum.mediamaster.com

Lets see how fast we can get to 20,000,000 tracks! Servers are standing by…

(Thanks to Frank for the cool image)

We think your Facebook profile should have a soundtrack - your music says a lot about you and how you’re feeling. We’ve been experimenting with our App for about 2 months now, and we’re excited about the version we released a few weeks ago.

Apparently, others are excited too! CNet’s WebWare did a very nice write up on the app here.

Here’s an excerpt:

“MediaMaster is one of many companies worth keeping an eye on, mainly for the potential of having your entire music library available anywhere you go, as long as you’ve got an Internet connection. Their Facebook app, which went live just a few weeks ago, is a prime example of a great use of the service.”

One of the things we think about a lot here is how we can help you get more out of your music. An important aspect of that is letting the world know what you like, and helping you to paint a picture or build a mood. Our Facebook application and widget are examples of how we can help you do that.

Here’s a quick video overview of the Facebook app…

TechCrunch has a great post on where to find DRM free music.  I buy a lot of music online from eMusic, and I’ve downloaded a few albums from Walmart.com that work great with MediaMaster

Worth a read:

 http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/08/24/finding-drm-free-music-online/