Melodeo puts artist-friendly twist on mobile music

Music fans have been slow to buy music on their mobile phones. So several companies have responded with services that let users access from their phones music that is stored on their computers.

t's called placeshifting -- a term used for the practice of accessing content stored on one device from another via the Internet.

At first blush, placeshifting seems a threat to the mobile music model, as customers who stream their music from their computers are not buying the tracks via existing a la carte services from the likes of Sprint and Verizon Wireless.

But placeshifting has advantages that sideloading -- the practice of transferring music files to a phone directly, as one would to an MP3 player -- does not. Users can sideload only as many songs as the phone can store, and neither carriers nor labels can charge for the practice. Placeshifting is a streaming technology, meaning there are no storage capacity concerns, and usage can be tracked and monetized.

The latest entry into the placeshifting market is Melodeo, which is offering a rather unique take on the trend with its new NuTsie service, which allows iTunes users to stream their music to any Internet-enabled mobile phone. In its beta phase, the free service is available only from the NuTsie Web site.

Unlike other placeshifting services that access music files on users' computers directly, Melodeo in this case is operating more like an Internet radio station. Users export their iTunes music library information to the NuTsie site online, which then matches it against Melodeo's database of licensed music.

The company then randomly streams these songs directly from Melodeo's servers, meaning the user's computer need not be on for the service to work. The random playlist is a requirement of the
Digital Millennium Copyright Act for such streaming services, which sets rules for how often songs by the same artist can be played in a given time frame and so on.

In doing so, Melodeo will pay royalties on each song streamed via the service, in accordance with webcaster royalty rates.

"If your iTunes library is full of music you copied from friends or you illegally downloaded and nobody got paid for it, this is going to monetize it," says Dave Dederer, Melodeo vice president of music content and former member of the band Presidents of the United States of America. "(Artists) get paid for it every time you listen to it."

source : /news.yahoo.com