News, info, and opinion by Mac users, for Mac users.

June 6, 2007

music

Melodio’s new service is nuTsie

Posted Jun. 6, ’07, 9:28 AM PT by Dan Moren
Category | Music

nuTsieYou have to love it when a company can’t come up with a good name for their service, so they take the name of an existing service and anagram it. Because, you see, it shuffles your iTunes music. Get it?

That’s more or less the idea behind nuTsie, which comes to us from Seattle firm Melodeo. You export your iTunes Library (the metadata, not the music), upload it to nuTsie, and the service streams your songs from its own library to your cell phone. There are some catches: you can only choose playlists, not single songs, playlists are all shuffled, and if your playlist contains a full album, Melodeo will insert random songs in between songs by the same artist. Think of it like having an iPod shuffle on your phone.

Far from being an illicit service, Melodeo plays by “radio rules,” meaning that artists and labels are compensated every time one of their songs are streamed. The public beta of the software is free, and has been tested on several popular phone models—however, streaming the songs at a high bitrate will eat up your data quota, so you’ll probably want to invest in a heavy data plan if you want to use nuTsie.

It’s an interesting idea, but I can’t quite figure out who the target audience is. Seems like if you have an iTunes library, you likely have an iPod as well: why jump through all these restrictive hoops instead of just bringing your iPod with you?

[via Playlist]


4 Comments

Rob Greenlee said:

Thanks for the great mention about nuTsie. I wanted to also mention that we also give users access to their iTunes playlist on the web as a personalized internet radio stream.

Check it out at http://nutsie.com/member/view_member/nuTsie.

Just click on a playlist in the right column to start listening to great music.

June 6, 2007 1:33 PM
John said:

The radio stream I could see. But paying $1000.00 in data charges to listen to music, uh, uh, no way. Believe me those charges would add up fast. Why not just buy an iPhone and listen to your music using the built in iPod. No data charges that way.

June 6, 2007 2:32 PM
Jonny said:

Having an iPhone would make me to want a data plan even more! for safari and all the other internet apps

June 6, 2007 4:59 PM
Dave-O said:

Yeah, Jonny, but you'd be getting more than music. I personally hope to get an iPhone some day with no data plan (use the internet at wifi hotspots).

To answer Dan's question, the target is people who already have an unlimited data plan (and compatible phone). 'Cause you'd be a total idiot to get an unlimited plan for this service only.

June 7, 2007 6:57 AM

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