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MySpace Pulls Project Playlist After Label Threats

Facebook Holds Firm For Now…

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MySpace pulled all Project Playlist widgets from its site yesterday. The move apparently came after MySpace received notices from several "major music companies" demanding that the popular playlist sharing widget be removed.

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"MySpace has received notices of infringement about Project Playlist at different times from several of the major music companies currently suing Project Playlist,"  MySpace said in statement.  That’s PR-speak for some or all of the major labels, as well as, a big publisher or two. (There’s more of the statement after the jump below.)

Owen Van Natta, Facebook‘s former chief revenue officer, recently became CEO of ProjectPlaylist and is an investor. His old pals at Facebook have recieved similar notices from label, but thus far they have not banned Owen’s widget.  That move is sure to please fans, but how long Facebook will risk massive litigation for a music widget remains to be seen.

Lawsuits aimed at stopping project Playlist for copyright infringement began back in April with a salvo from the RIAA. More recently, rumors have been swirling that Project Playlist will merge with imeem to take advantage of later’s deals the major labels.  imeem, which is openly for sale, denies the rumors.

The MySpace statement:

MySpace is an open platform that welcomes all developers to build rich and legitimate applications for its global community. We take copyright issues very seriously and our goal is to help developers build a substantial business by creating an environment that respects rights holders and protects their content.

MySpace has received notices of infringement about Project Playlist at different times from several of the major music companies currently suing Project Playlist. Per our policy of taking very seriously the requests of rights holders to block access to third party sites that are believed to be infringing, we have evaluated the requests of the major music companies and determined that it is in our best interest not to allow Project Playlist widgets on MySpace, and effective immediately, we will no longer be allowing these widgets within the MySpace platform. Any third party widgets (including any music widgets) are welcome on MySpace so long as they do not include infringing content—we encourage our users to utilize the many legitimate applications found on MySpace and across the Web.

Bruce Houghton on 12/20/2008 in Uncategorized | Permalink | Comments (4)
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4 Comments

  1. Hmm. Just wondering – “…evaluated the requests of the major music companies and determined that it is in our best interest not to allow Project Playlist widgets on MySpace…”
    Have they ever evaluated the requests of smaller record companies?
    M

  2. Good point Mike, the majors are still not helping the music industry at all…Project Playlist could really help out the smaller labels and those hundreds of thousands of artists who are not fortunate enough to have major label marketing budgets.

  3. It’s about removing Barriers of Entry. If smaller labels could profit, then the entire industry suffers from diminished returns. It’s a basic economic principle. The majors have to do what they can to hinder competition SO the industry can flourish (I know it’s sounds ironic, but it has to be done across all markets).

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