Music Ally

Over the weekend, music search engine SeeqPod went down, meaning people couldn’t use it to search for or play songs. There was a knock-on effect, too, as the many streaming music sites that rely on SeeqPod’s API were also hobbled, with their users unable to search for songs.

There’s speculation that this is related to the company’s pending lawsuits from major labels, or its recent bankruptcy filing. However, CEO Kasian Franks tells MP3newswire that the site will be back soon, and that it’s in acquisition talks with (as their story describes it) “a large media company that was a competitor to Apple”.

RealNetworks? It’ll be fascinating to see how this one plays out…

Comparing online music piracy to whack-a-mole is a well-worn metaphor, but it’s never been so apt as today, with The Pirate Bay announcing its IPREDator VPN service, and SeeqPod revealing plans to sell its source code to any developer willing to stump up $5,000.

In both cases, the spur is litigation and legislation. The Pirate Bay’s co-founders are awaiting the verdict of their trial next month, but more immediately, IPREDator is anticipating new Swedish laws allowing the authorities to demand the personal details of suspected copyright infringers.

Using the new VPN theoretically means people will be far less trackable, with the bonus (if you’re The Pirate Bay) of providing a potentially lucrative new revenue stream. It looks like the IFPI will have to revise those estimates of how much The Pirate Bay is making…

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Music search engine SeeqPod has a new plan to make money – it’ll sell its source code to developers for $5,000 a pop, so they can set up their own versions of the site. The company says its decision is a direct response to being sued by EMI, Capitol and Warner Music Group for copyright infringement.

“This just goes to show that when you sue technology – or the internet – you unleash a powerful demon technology,” says a spokesperson. “Imagine, millions of mini-SeeqPods – and the world will be a better place for it.”

Sites already using SeeqPod’s API include Favtape, Songerize, Songza and Streamzy – and a separate story on ReadWriteWeb suggests that these sites (which use the API rather than the source code) will have to pay $3 for every 1,000 search queries performed on their sites using the SeeqPod engine.

More legal headaches for music search engine Seeqpod, with EMI and Capitol Records filing a lawsuit against it, becoming the second major label to do so following Warner Music Group, which sued the site in January last year.

However, the new suit doesn’t just name Seeqpod as a defendant – it specifically lists CEO Kasian Franks and investors Raf Podowski and Shekhar Lodha as individuals.

How this tactic plays in court remains to be seen – in October last year EMI tried a similar strategy by naming MP3tunes founder Michael Robertson in its lawsuit against that company, but the personal suit was dismissed before the case made it to court.

Music search engine Seeqpod is greeting users with a blank white screen and the message that “We’re down for scheduled maintenance. Please try again later.”.

Hopefully, it’s not a Muxtape-style UNscheduled-maintenance-after-a-row-with-the-RIAA, eh? Seeqpod is used by numerous Web 2.0 sites offering free music streaming, so the downtime is actually bad news for the likes of Favtape, which is currently returning no search results for music at all – presumably due to Seeqpod being offline.

This is one of those moments when building your site based on another site’s technology has its downside…