I frequently sing the praises of all of the new business models involving creative works licensed to new digital devices and services, and even held a panel discussion on the topic in the US Capitol in June. So it's always dismaying when I see someone take the easy way out, and seemingly provide a service without any thought to the artist whose work is being exploited.

I'm referring here to a week-old site called SongZa. It's a jukebox site; you type in the artist and name you want to here, and moments later it's playing. Here's what it says on its About page:

[U]nlike KaZaa or Bit Torrent, Songza users can only listen to songs, not download
them. And unlike Last.fm or Rhapsody, Songza permits users to choose exactly the
song or artist they want to hear, and does not require them to subscribe or pay
for its services.

 

You must pay for those services because those services are paying licenses. Music licensing is more than just whether you can download it or not; anyone following the kerfuffle surrounding rates for Internet radio knows that.

But it appears the geniuses behind SongZa aren't paying anything to creators. I asked around, and it seems their technology involves them going and obtaining music from YouTube and then only playing the music, not displaying the video. Most of that music on YouTube has to be unlicensed, and even music that is likely wasn't licensed with the intent of being used separately in an Internet jukebox.

The real tragedy here is that this is a pretty cool technology. I typed in "Led Zeppelin - Kashmir" and within seconds I heard that familiar "BA-ba-bop, BA-ba-bop, BA-ba-bop, BA-ba-bop." Of course, I can operate a music jukebox with Napster to Go. But I pay for that, and the artists can opt out of the service (some do). If your music is being infringed on YouTube, it will now be infringed on SongZa as well. Here's hoping Aza Raskin and Scott Robbin realize that what people will love about their site is not the web design or the colors but the music, and will further realize that they have a legal and, yes, moral obligation to pay for that music. If you want to keep it subscription-free, fine, put up some ads. To steal a line from copyright foes, "Find a new business model!"

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This entry was posted on Friday, November 16th, 2007 at 9:24 am by Patrick Ross and is filed under advertising, copyright law, copyright opponents, creators, market forces. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.