Project Playlist, the website that lets people create and share music playlists and was led by current MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta, has blocked the playback of tunes to users in many countries.
The switch-off happened last week, when Palo Alto-based Playlist.com’s web player began displaying the message: “Due to licensing restrictions, some or all tracks may be unavailable for playback in your country.”
The RIAA filed suit against Playlist.com last year; it was also recently being sued by Universal and Warner, and had its web widget blocked by Facebook and MySpace. It has licenses from Sony (NYSE: SNE) and EMI and hired Van Natta in November, but it was only five months later he upped for MySpace, replaced by John Sykes. It also recently bought parts of the defunct Universal-Sony “Total Music” JV but laid off some people due to overlaps.
There’s no elaboration on what the restrictions are and the company hasn’t given us any info for the last week, but it’s clear Project Playlist is limping along to keep itself away from further lawsuits. It appears to have implemented the kind of territorial licensing framework the music industry likes to operate, which lets some tunes be played in some countries but not others.
Playlist.com compares itself with Google (NSDQ: GOOG) and Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO), saying “we do not host music files, nor do we make them available”. Instead, it lets users create playlists from tunes hosted elsewhere. But that defence from similar sites around the world often hasn’t convinced labels (the most litigious being EMI); Playlist.com has thus blocked loads of tunes – none of those I tried to play from the UK worked.
Dozens of angry users have peppered the company’s message board – many from artists and band webmasters who own their own songs but have lost the ability to embed playlists containing them. Staff respond: “We are investigating ways to offer audio to restricted locations in the future.”