They have an agreement with MediaNet yes, but it's definitely not some sort of blanket immunity to use copyrighted music.
As a simple example: turntable allows uploads. What happens when I upload an MP3 from a band that isn't part of the MediaNet catalog? And at what point does streaming radio become a "digital locker"?
> Develop your own streaming or radio service. Pair this capability with our recommendation engine to have the ability to create track and/or artist based playlists on the fly with minimal effort.
Seems pretty compelling that as a customer of MediaNet, their service (aside from uploads) is totally legal, unless MediaNet is somehow not.
But they could simply turn off uploading should they be called out for that--I should have addressed that in my original comment. My guess is that much of the community wouldn't care if that feature was gone.
MediaNet is a product of the labels.It started in 2001 as Musicnet, created by Real Networks, AOL Time Warner, Bertelsmann and EMI.
In my time at a label I tried to work with them, but their technology is kind of awful, so I wouldn't be shocked if Turntable is looking for a better partner.
Essentially they are a proxy between the label catalogs, reporting for royalties and DSP's (digital service providers) who license and distribute content.
Or as I referred to it internally, the "API Model"
Regarding the user uploaded stuff, that's under DMCA.
Of note: Turntable really falls into two licensing camps: DJ and listener. Very different terms required.
> My guess is that much of the community wouldn't care if that feature was gone.
Most of the big public rooms are founded on playing pretty obscure stuff. The indie rock rooms could survive but the electro and dubstep type rooms would definitely die.
I have no idea what the usage patterns are (do most people hang out in big public rooms or small rooms with friends?) but a pretty big segment would complain if uploads went away.
I wrote a Pandora clone using django and last.fm for recommendations. Because of the licensing issues I plan on open sourcing it on github in the near or distant future.
They supposedly pay SoundExchange for every play, and that's what's required to cover streaming radio in the US no matter the band. Other than that, it's a question of whether it's legal for them to host the file. To claim their hosting is illegal, the argument would have to be made that storing with them was somehow entirely different than storing on, say, dropbox.
As a simple example: turntable allows uploads. What happens when I upload an MP3 from a band that isn't part of the MediaNet catalog? And at what point does streaming radio become a "digital locker"?