Dan Pelson thinks licensing music for online distribution is dumb. He shouldknow: the former consumer marketing SVP at Warner Music Group wants tocreate a community around the music people already own play, and withuPlayMe he thinks he’s hit on a missing link.
UPlayMe will definitely not be signing licensing deals with the major labels to distribute music. Pelson sees music distribution as an overcrowded market plagued by hefty licensing fees, offering little room for a startup to connect music consumers around the music and videos they watch.
"To be blunt, the cost of licensing music is so significant that I don't see the possibility of putting an ad-based music service around music, if you're delivering it to the consumer," Pelson told us via phone. "Pandora, Rhapsody and the rest don't work, and over the next 24 months, licensing models will change. People who licensed (music catalogs at today's prices) will feel dumb."
Consumers already haveplenty of places to check out music and videos. Why bother joining that crowded field? So uPlayMe takes a different tack: letting other companies handle thedistribution of music while it concentrates on helping listenerscommunicate with each other about what they're hearing, regardless ofwhere they're hearing it. "The content is there," said Pelson. "That'snot the value proposition, that's not the problem that needs to besolved. It's 'how do you make music social again, how do you add value?'"
The uPlayMe application, released this week after about a year ofdevelopment, sits on your Windows or Macintosh computer, checking outwhat you play in a wide range of online and offline music applications:
iTunes, Windows Media Player, Winamp, YouTube, Last.fm, Pandora, Hulu,
Metacafe and CBS Radio. UPlayMe watches what you play in theseprograms to create a realistic portrait of your media consumptionhabits. Luckily for occasional fans of adult or controversial content, it offers a way to delete objectionable media from your list.
Once it has a good picture of your listening and viewing habits, uPlayMe recommends new content and hooksyou up with people who are into the same stuff. Once you make friends with people on the site, you can seewhat they're watching or listening to in real time. In addition, it shows you which other members are consuming the exact same piece of content as you at a certain time, so you can send them a message or check out their profile (see screenshot to the right).
The company is adding the ability to share anddiscuss media with people who don't have the application installed, as well. Those peoplewill get updates via e-mail instead of being able to watch or listen insidethe uPlayMe desktop application. Essentially, your friends become your filters, just like in real life.
The concept is somewhat similar to that of Last.fm,
but Pelson sees an opportunity to leapfrog ahead of that site as itworks on integrating with CBS and another CBS acquisition, CNET. Inaddition, Last.fm doesn't "scrobble" playback behavior from as manysources as uPlayMe. As for the social music behemoth iLike, which claims 28 millionusers, Pelson says most of those people don't use the service on aregular basis. He says uPlayMe's growth rate of 2,000 desktop installsper day is more significant.
So how is uPlayMe going to make money on music and videos withouthosting or distributing them? In addition to receiving kickbacks for ticket and music sales, the answer, of course, is advertising.
UPlayMe plans to offer user demographics to advertisers at a lower costthan other avenues will be able to match.
"Do you want to sponsorMadonna?" asked Pelson. "It used to be you'd write a huge check andtalk to her manager. Here, we'll place your ad every time we playMadonna (by matching an ad to the song's metadata)," adding, "there's no reasonwe cannot do this legally."
By finding a spot between consumers and their media without having to license the media, uPlayMe could build a formidable business, assuming consumers continue to install the application. It essentially mirrors the way many of us consume media (via instant message or email from a friend) in a way that's both faster and more passive. All you have to do is listen to something or watch it as you normally would, and your friends will see it. Plans for the future include a mobile application that will overlay peoples' geographic locations into the network, so that you can find people in your immediate area who are into the same stuff.
Warner Music Group was impressed too. The company invested in uPlayMe in July.
See Also:
- Free Music Boosts Last.fm's Traffic 58 Percent
- ILike Adds Features for Updating Content on Facebook, OpenSocial, and ITunes/WMP
- Amazon Takes On Wikipedia With Editable Music Data
- The Anti-Britney: San Diego Punk Rockers From the '80s
(Screenshots courtesy of uPlayMe)
