Music Ally

Remember Muziic? It used to be a PC application that let people build music playlists from YouTube videos, but just after Christmas it launched a website version.

One of the key selling points? The ability to also play videos from Vevo anywhere in the world – not just in North America – without seeing the accompanying ads. Vevo was quick to respond, emailing Muziic’s teenage founder David Nelson asking him to stop using Vevo’s content and trademark.

Soon after, Vevo removed its videos from YouTube’s API, ensuring that no third-party website could use them. Muziic is back to relying on pure YouTube videos for its music content, although the company has high hopes for its spin-off Facebook application, as well as the website.

There was lots of buzz online this weekend around Muziic, a new PC application created by 15-year-old developer David Nelson.

It’s essentially a desktop version of all those sites that stream music from YouTube – taking iTunes as its model, so users can build playlists and organise tracks as if they were in their library. Although slick, it seems there may be trouble brewing for Nelson.

CNET asked YouTube what it thought of the app, and this was the response: “This is the first we’ve become aware of the site. We’re looking into it now. On a preliminary review, however, it appears that the site violates our API terms of use.”

Nelson and his father, who helped develop it, say they’ve made every effort to comply with the API. We just tried to download it from the official site, and the link didn’t work – whether that’s due to an unexpected surge in traffic or legal developments remains to be seen.