Is It Possible to Share Music Legally?

With so many torrents causing headaches for record labels and recording artists alike, many rock stars and indie artists have decided to give away a song or two for free. Angels and Airwaves, the struggling band Tom DeLonge formed after leaving abandoning Blink-182, gave away an entire album because, ultimately, the label knew it couldn't sell it. Stealing music is just too darn easy, and unless your name is Lady Gaga or Eminem, few people will be willing to cough up the dough to buy your CD. Will this ever change? Only time will tell. In the meantime, there is an intriguing new iPhone app called MyStream that could help bridge the gap between users who want free access to music and those who want to purchase the songs they wish to own. MyStream came into development when Richard Zelson, a 24-year-old real estate professional, was traveling with his friend. “[He] would let me listen to his music,” Zelson said. “It was great.” “I started thinking if wireless headphones exist,” Zelson adds, “if portable speakers exist, why can't my friend play a song and have us both listen to it wirelessly? We can do it with a splitter naturally, but why not without the wires?” He also thought that listeners should have a “Buy Now” button, allowing them to instantly acquire the music they have just fallen in love with. Here's how it works: if Joe wants to hear a song that Bob is listening to (I'll use “Deep Inside of You” by Third Eye Blind as an example), he can use Bluetooth or Wi-Fi to gain access to the full song while it is being played on Bob's iPhone. If Bob stops listening to “Deep Inside of You” and Joe wants to hear that song or any other track in Bob's list, he can access a 90-second preview. All of the music comes from Bob's device, but none of it is ever actually transferred to Joe. Thus, when Joe wants to take home one of the songs he just heard, he simply clicks the “Buy Now” button within the MyStream app. “So you're benefiting the artist, and giving all listeners something that I imagine is universally desirable,” Zelson said. Interestingly, Zelson came up with this idea before the iPhone was released. “No one was making apps [at the time],” he said. Then all of a sudden the iPhone was released. “I don't come from a technology background,” Zelson continued. “I come from an economic and real estate background. But I thought it could be possible, and if it was, it could have huge value.” MyStream launched on March 31, 2011. Zelson says that he and his company, RMZ Development LLC, have been going full speed ever since June 2010. “We are definitely looking at different kind of partnerships with other streaming music services [so that] if no one is around you, you still have a use for that application,” Zelson said. “There are other things we can do with individual users streaming music. Right now we have it limited to Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, but it will also be 3G and 4G compatible.” In the latter scenario, Zelson said that they will have to come up with a mechanism for limiting the number of streamers that show up. “I don't want 1,000 people to show up in a two-mile radius, but there are different ways that we can leverage the usage of 3G and 4G to expand the listeners to any given station,” he said. “Once you start streaming for a large group of people, the laws change.” The challenge, he says, is to “properly navigate” between a private, localized network and a larger scale environment that involves thousands of users. “It's very possible but we have to make sure we navigate it legally,” Zelson adds. MyStream is currently free on the App Store and is in development for Google GOOG Android. Follow me @LouisBedigian