Ubiquitous web=ubiquitous music October 29, 2009

A new service is attempting to change the nature of online music, again. Playdar is an organization that is trying to take all the music (not downloadable, but stream-able) on the web, on personal hard drives, and from anywhere else you might digitally store music and make it immediately available. What does this mean? It means that a song you write about, suggest, or mention in your blog, Facebook page, tweet, etc. will be immediately available for play. An article by New Scientist explains this service with better clarity.

This is all hypothetical speak, of course. While Playdar is up and running, the instant gratification promised above will only be available should social networking sites choose to opt into this service.

Like many of the web’s musical services designed to let netizens listen but not download (Last.fm, Pandora, etc.) this concept raises a whole host of copyright issues. While both New Scientist and the Playdar page explain that this service does no more than the aforementioned seasoned music-playing sites do, Playdar, if widely adopted, has the ability to make any song playable, on demand, which is not something other sites offer. And while the songs may not be downloadable, who needs to download anymore as the web continues to grow ever more portable in the form of smartphones and netbooks? While musicians and streaming sites are silent on the nascent service as of yet, this infomaven predicts a violent backlash.