Folks who use the somewhat controversial MP3Tunes online "music locker" service have a new trick up their sleeves: they can stream their online music collections to the Nintendo Wii. MP3Tunes positions itself as a service provider that offers a digital Music Locker, formerly dubbed "Oboe." the idea is that users can sync up their own music collections and then stream them to any Web browser or compatible portable device or home entertainment system: users just log in to gain access to their lockers. The new Wii client developed by Rodney Powers enables MP3Tunes users to tap into their Music Lockers from the Wii via MP3Tunes open API; similar clients have been developed for the PlayStation 3, Windows Mobile devices, TiVo units, and a variety of other music-capable devices.
"The Wii is the latest popular gaming device that, with MP3tunes’ technology, actually becomes a home stereo system," said MP3Tunes CEO Michael Robertson, in a release.
MP3Tunes also operates a Sideload.com, which keeps track of free music tracks that have been loaded into MP3Tunes’ music lockers and functions as a music discovery service for MP3Tunes users, enabling users to discover new music by "sideloading" it into their existing MP3Tunes lockers.
MP3Tunes has come under fire from music label EMI, which filed a copyright infringement suit against the company last month over both Sideload.com and the MP3Tunes Music Locker. Essentially, EMI argues MP3Tunes doesn’t have the right to distribute the music contained in users’ Music Lockers, and that Sideload.com amounts to an unauthorized music distribution system. MP3Tunes counters that the lockers are password-protected so only authorized users have access to music they’ve already bought and paid for, and Sideload.com is a music search service which doesn’t host any music at all. But MP3Tunes was actually the first to draw lawyers at 20 paces: the company filed its own suit against EMI in September following the receipt of cease-and-desist notices from EMI: MPT3Tunes is seeking its services be defined as "service providers" under the DCMA.
MP3Tunes’ legal situation has some echoes from an earlier period of online music: Michael Robertson’s earlier company, the original MP3.com, was sued by major record labels over a MyMP3.com service that enabled users to listen to music from their CD collections via the Internet once they established they had a physical copy of the CD. Following a protracted legal battle and a series of settlements that ran into the hundreds of millions of dollars, Universal/Vivendi eventually sold the remnants of MP3.com to CNET in 2003.
