Maybe the First Rule of Business Plans Should Be Don’t Get Sued

There's been an alarming trend in music services launching recently. In an era in which the recording industry fears just about everything electronic, most music services have a lot to worry about besides just getting users and making money. Muxtape search engine Muxfind had even removed the ability to search by artist for a while because of fear of legal repercussions. (After all, if Torrent indexers can be sued, why not a search engine for a site that potentially infringes copyrights?) Yet, apparently some developers are oblivious to potential legal issues when it comes to music, and soldier on, releasing new apps which, while they may be cool, are almost certain to attract the attention of the RIAA's enormous legal machine if they actually catch on.

Our first entrant in the RIAA lawsuit sweepstakes is iRadeo, a cool little app billing itself as "a free online radio platform that allows anyone to stream their MP3/WAV files. All you have to do is install it, specify the directory where it can find your files, and it will stream away. You can then embed the player on your web site or allow others to use the widget, and there you have your own personal radio station. I'm not sure if the iRadeo developers forgot that the Internet Radio Equality Act still hasn't even had a hearing in Congress, or if they figure that SoundExchange won't go after every individual streamer (ha!), but there's no warning on the iRadeo site that users may be subject to a big, fat bill, or worse, a subpoena after using the software. I'd assume that iRadeo would be just fine, but if it's your users meeting the recording industry on the wrong end of a suit, it's probably not good for business.

Our second entrant, SoundCloud, is more likely to end up doing the tango with the RIAA, and my guess is that it will be sooner rather than later. SoundCloud is a service that's designed for "music professionals" to be able to send their music out easily without relying on FTP, email, or Torrent sites. Currently invite-only, SoundCloud points the general public to ask favorite artists and labels for an invite to receive the artist's music, but we all know what happens to the best laid plans of mice and men. Unless each and every invite they send out is verified, and each and every music track passed through the system is checked and double-checked, something tells me that the lawyers will come knocking. They haven't been especially fond of musicians using torrents to deliver music to fans, so SoundCloud may either be a welcome change for them, or one more avenue they claim results in music theft.

Sources: eHub, Download Squad