Music Ally

Following reports that News Corporation was seeking to replace MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe, the company has confirmed that “by mutual agreement” DeWolfe will be leaving the company in the near future, although he’ll still be involved as a strategic advisor.

News Corp’s new chief digital officer Jonathan Miller has also said that he’s “in discussions” with MySpace president (and everyone’s first MySpace friend) Tom Anderson about “assuming a new role in the organisation”.

So who will get DeWolfe’s job? Former Facebook COO Owen Van Natta is the subject of most chatter among Silicon Valley blogs, despite the fact that he only joined Project Playlist relatively recently as its CEO.

Music startup Project Playlist is now being sued by just two major labels – WMG and UMG – after EMI pulled out of the lawsuit and signed a licensing deal with the playlisting site. It’s the second to do so, after Sony Music.

“Project Playlist is becoming a fan favourite,” says EMI’s president of music services Ronn Were. “Our artists also know that word-of-mouth among friends is a powerful part of music discovery”.

There’s no news on the details – specifically the licensing terms, and whether EMI has taken an equity stake in Project Playlist. However, the site’s applications are still barred from Facebook and MySpace due to the ongoing lawsuit with the other majors – hampering Project Playlist’s growth.

Although given todays rumours about Imeem, that at least means its cash will be draining less quickly.

It’s a troubling end of 2008 for music site Project Playlist, to say the least. MySpace banned its widget last week following pressure from the major labels, and now Facebook has followed suit.

The latter is possibly more of a problem for Project Playlist, given that more than 660,000 Facebook users had installed its application on their profiles. The social network has explained its decision thus:

“The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) initially contacted Facebook last summer requesting the removal of the Project Playlist application for copyright violation, and recently reopened those communications. We have forwarded the RIAA’s letters to Project Playlist so it can work directly with that organization and music labels on a resolution. In the meantime, the application must be removed to comply with the Facebook Platform Terms of Service. Our hope and expectation is that the parties can resolve their disagreements in a manner that satisfies the developer and copyright holder, that continues to offer a great experience to music fans, and that doesn’t discourage other developers from using Platform to share their creativity and test new ideas.”

Project Playlist may have signed its first major label licensing deal this week, with Sony Music Entertainment, but it’s still facing lawsuits from the other three majors, plus this determined RIAA campaign to scrub it from its most popular partner sites.

It’s been an interesting few days for music service Project Playlist, to say the least. Late last week, the company’s widgets were removed from MySpace, apparently following pressure from several major labels. Or, as a MySpace statement put it:

“MySpace has received notices of infringement about Project Playlist at different times from several of the major music companies currently suing Project Playlist. Per our policy of taking very seriously the requests of rights holders to block access to third party sites that are believed to be infringing, we have evaluated the requests of the major music companies and determined that it is in our best interest not to allow Project Playlist widgets on MySpace, and effective immediately, we will no longer be allowing these widgets within the MySpace platform.”

Separate reports suggested that Facebook had been getting similar pressure, but had refused to remove Project Playlist from its service.

But here’s the thing: yesterday, Project Playlist signed a legit licensing deal with Sony BMG, giving it access to the label’s catalogue of music and videos. The deal won’t bring the MySpace/Facebook problems to an end, since the site is still being sued by UMG, WMG and EMI, but it seemingly indicates that Project Playlist is keen to strike legitimate deals before the labels force it out of business.