I hate you, anywhere.fm. I just spent the past six weeks building the exact same thing. :(

On the other hand, it is great. The only problem I have with a web music player is that I have a huge music library and it takes forever to upload everything. The other issue I have is there is no easy way to sync to my ipod. I'd also like to be able to burn to CD for listening in my car. I'm investigating AIR for these features. Initially my plan was to make extensions for the various browsers, but even just making a FF extension is a huge headache.

Also, I don't really know whether or not what I'm doing is legal. I will admit that a good chunk of my library is stuff I've ripped from other people's iPods. If I upload this stuff to S3, is Amazon going to turn me over to the RIAA?

As a user, I love anywhere.fm but as an investor, I'd have a qestion about its legality because of the UMG vs MP3.com case. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UMG_v._MP3.com Have you guys looked into that? Seems to me that these two services are almost identical and anywhere.fm has an excellent frontend.

Excellent question! The most precise case to follow is the MyPlay case. In fact, the ex-ceo of MP3.com created a startup, similar to ours, that is protected under the results of the MyPlay case, which showed that digital locker services are kosher. In fact a quick google search shows you this space has many competitors :).

What's the logic behind this precedent? Isn't it functionally equivalent to what mp3.com offered?

Logic? US courts? Does not compute.

:)

Is it because the media files come from consumers who've already ripped their media into mp3s and upload the songs themselves?

MP3.com bought a bunch of CDs and went to town ripping them, sans license arrangements with the studios.

I like Anywhere.fm a lot. It has a very simple and nice UI. In my opinion, it's a very useful service.

That number isn't what matters. Stickiness is what matters.

Shameless self-linking: "What You Should Be Measuring," http://blogs.xobni.com/asmith/archives/33

And yet, I doubt users are leaving 1.4 million songs and not returning to listen to them once in awhile.

Interesting. Wouldn't most user's have a portable music player? If so, why would users go to the site to listen to their uploaded music? From a listener standpoint, the fun is in exploring other people's music.

There really are two user roles at Anywhere.fm, the "inner DJ" and the "music consumer". The 1.4 million songs shows that they've been successful at making the "share your music" process easy. The more important statistic is how many people actually listen to any of the stations.

At 3.5MB per song that's 4.6TB. On Amazon S3 I think that'd cost ~$500 in ingress bandwidth and ~$700/mo for storage. Not too expensive so far. The streaming is going to hurt the most though I'm sure.

There's also the SoundExchange fees for each song that is played from a friend-radio.

From the about page:

"Play it anywhere on the best web music player"

What does this mean exactly? In what sense is it the best?

I wouldn't read too much into it...

Maybe it means " play it (any song ) anywhere on the best web music player ( which would be the Anywhere music player)" so translation play that song anywhere you are on anyhwere. Then again I may be wrong.

Hum... It might be good if Anywhere.fm's buttons on the lower left become consistent with iTunes' buttons on the lower left.

So this is kind of like Orb only your music gets uploaded to a central server instead of streamed from your home PC?

The UI is incredible.

Do users pay for space? Will it be ad-supported?

seeqpod makes more since to me. http://www.seeqpod.com

for itunes users who have a big music library, i find Simplify Media much easier. www.simplifymedia.com