Labels Force Playlist.com Shift To Online Radio
Playlist.com has switched from user generated playlists to to an online radio model as of July 1st. The move was forced by the labels, according to the company. It's not the first major setback for the Playlist team, who founded the original ProjectPlaylist in 2006, with the goal of spreading user made playlists across the social web.
By 2008, users had grown to 20 million. But the labels and RIAA objected to pulling content from other online sources, and in 2008 MySpace and Facebook disabled all ProjectPlaylist widgets. Deals in 2009-2010 with the labels, and shift to Playlist.com's slightly more restricted format, gave the company a second chance. But by then, traffic was falling and a messy bankruptcy followed. Still the core team battled on.
But last week, circumstances forced the biggest shift yet:
"Sadly on July 1, 2013, the record labels required us to shut down the original Playlist service. We're so sorry; it was our life for over 6 years. We made sure to keep your playlist data safe and hope you'll try our new, approved smart radio service. We know you put a lot of effort into creating the 80 million playlists at Playlist.com, so we sincerely ask you to try them as stations; please check back later this week. We are forced to play by internet radio rules but kept your playlists as true as possible."
Same old same-old. Heaven forbid people pick out what they want to listen to, or tell their friends “hey, listen to this!”
Though the intention of the recording companies by closing Playlist is to make additional income from songs recorded in the 40’s, 50’s, 60’s, 70’s, 80’s etc., the end result is to deprive the many from ever hearing these songs, in effect destroying the music.
The songs they are now keeping locked up, are not theirs to begin with, but money makes power, and rights are given without understanding their full consequences. Short term greed undermines again the public good.
Have you tried to use it lately? Nothing like before. They killed it. Sucks