A (now defunct) mp3 blog, Good Hodgkins, late last year had an interesting post on whether or not The Hype Machine and Elbo.ws are good for mp3 blogs and the music business. The proprietors of both mp3 search engines participated in the comments. At http://www.goodhodgkins.com/2006/10/04/so-are-the-hype-machine-and-elbows-bad-for-business/

The legal issues with both The Hype Machine and the somewhat similar elbo.ws ( http://elbo.ws/ ) (as well as the glitchy: blogmusik http://www.blogmusik.net/ ) - both great sites - are complex and from a lawyer's standpoint really interesting. Both sites have to grate on the RIAA, and no doubt the RIAA is monitoring both sites and has authorized its legal team to prepare legal actions in the event that the RIAA determines to pull the trigger on a lawsuit against the sites. What is likely holding them back is (i) neither site has achieved truly universal adoption, (ii) many of those who regularly use the sites do not yet use the advanced features, such as the feeds noted by Jason, and (iii) there is significant risk that the RIAA might lose such a lawsuit (i.e., a court determines the sites are merely googles for music, search engines that don't themselves host infringing content, and with substantial non-infringing uses), and such a loss could establish legal precedents for the RIAA that would significantly harm the RIAA in other areas. Elbo.ws (which seems to have a better selection of non-U.S. music blogs) and The Hype Machine are perhaps in slightly different legal positions: Elbo.ws excerpts text from the relevant blog entry and it appears to have less developed tools than The Hype Machine.

The great thing about the Hype Machine is that it addresses the need for a practical, easy to use filter for all the music blogs and free music available now on the web. Besides the feeds, the "popular" tab on The Hype Machine (and elbo.ws) instantly give one an idea of the buzz tracks and artists gaining traction on the music blogs. This sort of group tastemaker function is very useful. Hopefully, they will expand their features in the future so that an artist search pulls up not just blog posts and mp3 tracks, but the artist's website, links to music press pieces on the artist, tour schedule, etc.

Songbird ( http://www.songbirdnest.com/ ), still under development, which incorporates a music player and browser using the firefox/mozilla architecture, could be as or more revolutionary than even The Hype Machine, particularly if it eventually incorporates tabbed browsing and feeds. iTunes has significant limitations that Songbird is ideally positioned to exploit. If I were a VC, I'd take positions in The Hype Machine and Songbird, as well as come up with a "for profit" live music archive ( http://www.archive.org/details/etree ).

We have no idea if Cisco's proposal was "reasonable". I'm guessing they were greedy, figuring they had the leverage to be so. It will serve them right if Apple rebrands it to "Applefone" or the like.

I thought we were getting KFC