Share your iTunes playlists with others using Nutsie |
Loading ...This morning I stumbled nutsie.com, which allows you to register and share your iTunes playlists with others. Registration only requires an email address and password, no email confirmation. Yeah, I know the name is a little nutsy but with this version of the web, names apparently don’t matter as much.
Nutsie works by processing the information in your iTunes Library.xml file which you can locate in the iTunes top menu under: FILE->EXPORT LIBRARY. Then just choose where to export the file (documents by default) and use the web upload form at nutsie. You do not transfer the songs themselves, only the XML data.
Our family’s library of 2,023 songs was 3.2 MB and took seven minutes to process, not “a few hours” as the message indicated could be the longest delay.
Now what? You can visit your iTunes playlists through the browser and listen to them from anywhere. Others can check out what songs you have on iTunes. For example, you can check out my Van Halen - David Lee Roth Years playlist, every song David Lee Roth did with Van Halen (sans bootlegs). I’ve been spinning that a lot lately.
Kind of slick, if it’s legal. I noticed in the copyright section Nutsie was from Melodeo and I know Rob (from Webtalk Radio) who works there. Thought I’d ping him on Skype and ask what the story was with Nutsie. Do they have all these tracks licensed for streaming? Keep your eyes on the comments section below for Rob’s response or in an update at the bottom of this post.
On the Melodeo home page they do show logos for Sony BMG and Warner music which are two of the four major RIAA artists, so maybe they are paying royalties and it’s all above board. From a user standpoint, you don’t have much to worry about as you are only sharing your playlist XML file not the actual songs.
Wouldn’t worry that this is like Jammie Thomas who this week was successfully sued for $220,000:
[Jammie Thomas] found guilty of “musical terrorism” related to alleged online music-sharing activities, now owes the RIAA $222,000 for making twenty-four songs, including Sarah McLachlan’s ‘Building a Mystery,’ available to others via the file sharing network Kazaa. That works out to $9,167 per song or $110,000 per twelve-song CD.
Clever marketing on the Nutsie blog they point to a playlist you can “legally” listen to on Nutsie of the songs Ms. Thomas was busted for sharing.
My comments about legality are related to what Nutsie is doing (streaming the songs), not what you or I as members on the site are doing. Dave Dederer, part of the Nutsie team, says Nutsie is paying royalties on all streamed songs, so there you go: Nutsie is above board. Guess we don’t have to wait for confirmation from Rob that everything is cool.
The RIAA doesn’t have a problem with playlist sharing. Not yet, anyway. Maybe in some freakish parallel universe you get the death penalty for that. Don’t laugh too hard, in the UK there is a lawsuit over mechanics listening to their personal radios too loud (thanks Techdirt). The music scene is nutsy alright, maybe their name is spot on.
Being Melodeo is into mobile phones, Nutsie could prove to be a semi-useful tool for mobile phone users, where you likely wouldn’t have your iTunes library handy, as long as you have a compatible phones. Want to listen to your favorite iTunes playlist on your mobile phone? If you have web access and your iPod battery is dead, Nutsie could be your new friend.
Updating could suck
Another possible downside is having to reupload the Library.xml data every time it changes. Would be nice to see some sort of Nutsie plugin which does that for you automatically, incrementally changing the data on Nutsie server. I have the last.fm iTunes plugin which sends music listened to last.fm servers (iScrobbler). The other part, for those who are interested in tracking their listening data. I’m sure other geeky music fans like me are interested in the stats behind the listening which Nutsie kind of forgets about. Maybe they’ll offer some kind of stats in a future version?
I am not a number, I am a free man!
My member number is 130367, which if they started numbering at 1, means they have over 100,000 members (doubtful, as very few new services start numbering at 1). Your member name isn’t used when looking at other members, instead it’s the number in the format below:
www.nutsie.com/member/view_member/MEMBER_NUMBER
Are you already signed up for Nutsie? You like rock and roll? I know my bud Matt Wardlaw (what should we be linking to these days, Matt?) does and this service might appeal to him. For those taking the Nutsie plunge, what’s your member number? I’m always interested in finding new music and artists to enjoy.
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Hey, this is Dave Dederer from nuTsie. Yes, nuTsie is legal — we are operating under the compulsory licenses offered to webscasters. In addition to my work at Melodeo/nuTsie, I am a record company owner, music publishing company owner, songwriter, record producer and performer…that was my full-time world for 10+ years…there’s no way I would sign on to work on something that was shortchanging the artist.
We don’t move any music files. We don’t facilitate sharing of any music files. We don’t allow listening to a song on demand. These are the big no-nos. We’re basically just trying to be an amazingly dynamic and targeted radio station.
Thanks for the comments. We’ll have an auto-update plug-in at some point in the next few months. Any and all input appreciated.
Comment by Dave Dederer — October 6, 2007 @ 10:34 pm PST
Thanks for stopping by personally to address this concern, Dave. Rock on
Comment by TDavid — October 7, 2007 @ 9:02 am PST
Hey TDavid,
Check out my nutsie page: #10.
My library’s aight, but I have added a lot of cool playlists to my favorites - the ones in yellow text.
Sweet!
Comment by Jonny — October 10, 2007 @ 9:36 am PST
Hey I love nuTsie! check out my page, my memeber number is 39, Enjoy!
Comment by Mark — October 10, 2007 @ 9:39 am PST
An interesting service, although publicly sharing playlists might be a bit tricky I’d say. The site might be legal, but bare in mind that the music a lot of people have is not. I believe it was a figure of about 40% of all households here in which music got downloaded through the non-official ways, now with a couple of songs you won’t jump out of the millions doing it anymore but the moment you start uploading huge playlists of what you would have you’re drawing additional attention to yourself.
Two thousand tracks can already be considered as a lot, but some are going around with playlists of about 10k~50k tracks, as you might understand chances are low you have legally purchased all those tracks. Especially if your profile would state an age of anything below 25 along I’m sure the RIAA would love to have a little chat with you.
Now here it’s only illegal to upload content, but in the states I believe the downloading is illegal as well. So no matter in which fashion you would have obtained those tracks, if you have a playlist showing online that you have 50k tracks I wouldn’t be surprised if some dogs from the RIAA would be coming onto your back.
Since for the most ridiculous things they’ve sewed already I would advice those with not 100% legal music to avoid services like these as a whole if owning those tracks might be in conflict with national laws.
Comment by Slevi — October 10, 2007 @ 11:09 am PST