[Yr7-10it] Muziic

[stephen at melbpc.org.au]

Teen's invention puts YouTube music on tap

March 10, 2009 - 10:35AM
http://www.theage.com.au/news/technology/web/teens-invention-puts-youtube-
music-on-tap/2009/03/10/1236447178451.html


A schoolboy and his father have unleashed free software that lets people 
listen to YouTube's vast collection of music videos as if it were a 
private collection.

 http://www.muziic.com/

Muziic software created by 15-year-old David Nelson enables computers to 
mine YouTube's rich database of songs and play customised lists of tunes 
free of charge.

"The Muziic player is a pretty cool little thing," said analyst Matt 
Rosoff of technology industry tracking firm Directions On Microsoft.

"It looks and works a lot like iTunes in that it is a downloable desktop 
application; but you get all the content from YouTube. You have an all-in-
one-place library of music for free."

Google, which bought YouTube in 2006 in a $US1.65 billion deal, says the 
Muziic service has only recently caught its eye and that it is checking 
whether it conforms to the YouTube terms of service.

Google has been trying to develop ways to make money off of YouTube and 
that goal could be undermined by a Muziic Player that lets users tap into 
the video-sharing website's music while avoiding advertisements.

"Hopefully, they will work something out," Rosoff said of Muziic and 
YouTube. 

"Muziic is analogous to a subscription music service, but it's free."

Nelson and his father, Mark, launched the self-funded internet enterprise 
this year and bill it as the first "YouTube for music."

David Nelson is Muziic's chief technology officer, having switched from 
public school to taking online high school classes from home in order to 
devote more time to the website and the player software, according to his 
father.

Muziic Player takes advantage of Content ID software that YouTube built 
into the video-sharing website to enable owners of music to more easily 
locate copyrighted works.

Muziic servers crashed for an hour on one day last week due to an 
overwhelming amount of internet traffic to the nascent website.

"We served thousands of downloads of the Muziic Player and Encoder in 
just a few hours!" a message about the incident on the website's blog 
said.

"We've expected and anticipated extreme growth in our website and 
application ... However, within less than a week of our 'unofficial' 
launch, we have been - over abundantly - blessed with huge amounts of 
traffic!"

Muziic said it had to add another server to handle the load for requests 
for the media player.  AFP
--

Cheers,
Stephen