

Anywhere.fm = 1.4 Millions songs uploaded.  - rokhayakebe

O boy. Steve Jobs, I really recommend you call these guys up and start talking price. Seriously if I had a spare million bucks I would do anything to buy a piece of this *up.
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menloparkbum
I hate you, anywhere.fm. I just spent the past six weeks building the exact
same thing. :(

On the other hand, it is great. The only problem I have with a web music
player is that I have a huge music library and it takes forever to upload
everything. The other issue I have is there is no easy way to sync to my ipod.
I'd also like to be able to burn to CD for listening in my car. I'm
investigating AIR for these features. Initially my plan was to make extensions
for the various browsers, but even just making a FF extension is a huge
headache.

Also, I don't really know whether or not what I'm doing is legal. I will admit
that a good chunk of my library is stuff I've ripped from other people's
iPods. If I upload this stuff to S3, is Amazon going to turn me over to the
RIAA?

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nickb
As a user, I love anywhere.fm but as an investor, I'd have a qestion about its
legality because of the UMG vs MP3.com case.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UMG_v._MP3.com> Have you guys looked into that?
Seems to me that these two services are almost identical and anywhere.fm has
an excellent frontend.

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anson
Excellent question! The most precise case to follow is the MyPlay case. In
fact, the ex-ceo of MP3.com created a startup, similar to ours, that is
protected under the results of the MyPlay case, which showed that digital
locker services are kosher. In fact a quick google search shows you this space
has many competitors :).

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amichail
What's the logic behind this precedent? Isn't it functionally equivalent to
what mp3.com offered?

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palish
Logic? US courts? Does not compute.

~~~
anson
:)

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rnesh
I like Anywhere.fm a lot. It has a very simple and nice UI. In my opinion,
it's a very useful service.

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adamsmith
That number isn't what matters. Stickiness is what matters.

Shameless self-linking: "What You Should Be Measuring,"
<http://blogs.xobni.com/asmith/archives/33>

~~~
palish
And yet, I doubt users are leaving 1.4 million songs and not returning to
listen to them once in awhile.

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mrevelle
Interesting. Wouldn't most user's have a portable music player? If so, why
would users go to the site to listen to their uploaded music? From a listener
standpoint, the fun is in exploring other people's music.

There really are two user roles at Anywhere.fm, the "inner DJ" and the "music
consumer". The 1.4 million songs shows that they've been successful at making
the "share your music" process easy. The more important statistic is how many
people actually listen to any of the stations.

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staunch
At 3.5MB per song that's 4.6TB. On Amazon S3 I think that'd cost ~$500 in
ingress bandwidth and ~$700/mo for storage. Not too expensive so far. The
streaming is going to hurt the most though I'm sure.

~~~
ashu
There's also the SoundExchange fees for each song that is played from a
friend-radio.

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amichail
From the about page:

"Play it anywhere on the best web music player"

What does this mean exactly? In what sense is it the best?

~~~
kyro
I wouldn't read too much into it...

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sbraford
So this is kind of like Orb only your music gets uploaded to a central server
instead of streamed from your home PC?

The UI is incredible.

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palish
Hum... It might be good if Anywhere.fm's buttons on the lower left become
consistent with iTunes' buttons on the lower left.

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jwinter
Do users pay for space? Will it be ad-supported?

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SKUM
seeqpod makes more since to me. <http://www.seeqpod.com>

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ajc001
for itunes users who have a big music library, i find Simplify Media much
easier. www.simplifymedia.com

