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I first came to know of a mobile phone that has an iTunes feature with Motorora’s ROKR model owned by my friend. I thought how cool it was – its design interface was just simply neat and very easy to use. My friend’s phone had 128 MB of upgradable memory card and could store approximately 50 songs.
Just recently, I read on the internet news that a new website called www.nutsie.com offers free streaming music to some 3G compatible phones.
How it works is that anyone can sign up on the website and export the playlist from this iTunes to Nutsie. This means that the only the metadata files related to the songs and not the songs itself which can be relatively files that will be uploaded.
According to Melodeo, the Seattle based company who owns nutsie.com, the uploaded metadata of play list is matched with the websites rich repository of songs.
The service is really cool but it comes with a quirk. Since the service adheres to “radio rules” or the same workings with broadcast radio, the user cannot pick the song of his choice but instead, nutsie only streams songs from his play list and does so in random manner.
To date, the website claims that it has a library of about 500,000 songs and is continually adding 10,000 new songs every few days. For now, another quirk may be that some songs from the uploaded iTunes play list may not play given that iTunes has 5 million songs in its library.
Melodeo says that the streaming music service is best used with Motorola RAZR V3xx Phone, Nokia N75 Phone, Nokia E65 Mocha/Silver GSM SmartPhone, Nokia E62 Smartphone, LG CU500 Phone, Samsung A707 SYNC Phone, Samsung MM-A900M Ace Phone, Samsung M610 Phone, Samsung M620 Upstage Black Phone, Sony Ericsson W600i Phone, Nokia N95, Nokia N80, Nokia N73, Nokia E61 and Nokia 6630.
Although this service may seem to eclipse that of iTunes, whose mother company Apply has yet to come up with the launching of its newest product, iPhone, Melodeo has expressed that it is not their intention to anger Apple but instead to extend the services of the popular iTunes.
Another thing stressed by Melodeo is that there is a positive aspect of the nutsie service which is monetizing music that is illegally acquired in the iTunes library. How this works is that and nutsie streams a song from the uploaded play list, Melodeo pays the artist and record company for the song which was illegally acquired. This was by Melodeo vice president of music content Dave Dederer who is himself a songwriter and record label owner.
Nutsie is hoped to be commercially launched in six to eight weeks and will partner with a carrier company to take care of the subscription services. There has yet no decision on the charging fees but Melodeo is working double time to look for advertisers to generate income that will eventually make the nutsie service free for users.