? Viacom Brings the Hammer Down On YouTube |

Main

| Where Are the Flying Cars and Digital Watermarks? ?

March 13, 2007

mSpot Remix: A Threat to Music Phones, iPods Everywhere?

Olga Kharif

Several years ago, Sling Media has allowed users of mobile devices to access video recorded on their TiVos with their mobiles. Now, mSpot just unveiled a really interesting application, which allows users of any mobile phone to instantly, remotely access their music libraries stored on PCs via their mobile phones. Called mSpot Remix, the application streams songs directly onto the cell phone.

Clearly, this application could be big with consumers. Why would anyone bother to carry around an expensive music phone or an iPod with Remix around? Unless carriers charge an arm and a leg for the service, I really don't know the answer to that. I can see this service becoming big -- if U.S. carriers are brave enough to sign up for it.

I am not sure the record industry and U.S. wireless carriers, to whom mSpot plans to peddle the application, will love Remix, though, because of the possibility of copyright issues arising. It seems to me that if I can stream music stored on my own PC, I could be able to find a way to stream music from my friends' computers as well. I wouldn't be surprised if some geeks uncovered a way to do just that. And that gets into those nasty copyright issues that carriers might wish to steer clear of.

05:59 PM

wireless

TrackBack URL for this entry:

http://blogs.businessweek.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/