Friend launched a Chrome extension that auto-generates playlists from blogs

ex.fm

15 points·bdickason··5 comments

Awesome. I tried using SongBird (http://www.getsongbird.com/) for a while, but it never seemed natural to switch to a specialized browser every time I landed on a music blog. This is a much more user friendly proposition.

One major problem: it's an unwritten rule for music blogs (at least the well established ones that I read) that they don't host the MP3s forever. They put them up for a couple of weeks, and delete them after that. The artists and labels tolerate the infringement because they like the publicity. This extension doesn't seem to store the files at all. Maybe it could be coupled with S3, Dropbox, etc, and upload to the cloud the tracks you listen to?

I'm worried about the track deletion as well. My guess is that doing anything that involves storing would lead to legal issues which have befallen nearly every other music startup.

I would hope that eventually they could automatically point you to another URL w/ the same MP3 if it existed w/in the ex.fm database.

Do they really pursue this as a startup?

An extension for a browser with 2% market share?

Last I hear Chrome share was more along the lines of 6-7%. And that 6-7% is generally an internet-savvy group, who are more likely to adopt this extension than the average user. Finally, I think it's safe to say Chrome share will do anything but go down for the foreseeable future.

This is wonderful. Perfect for the music blogs I frequent.

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