Spool.fm, similar to last.fm, is a social music website, except with a crucial difference: on last.fm, you could never choose exactly what you wanted to hear due to copyright laws, whereas Spool.fm allows you to search for the music you want to hear, drag it to a playlist, then play it in succession. Heck, if you wanted to live on the edge, you could even play the songs in the search results with a single click.
When logged in, the user can save the playlist and come back to listen to it any time, as well as access an impressive social function called Synchro. Synchro allows you to give any friend a single link, and once they click it, you both listen to music together; that is, the same music at the same time, synchronized (hence the name, Synchro). As far as I can tell, there are no limits, except for, of course, you can’t download any music from the site. It’s like iTunes, except with all of the music in the world loaded already. The legality of Spool.fm is definitely questionable; I’d like to see some sort of official statement on how this is possible without getting their pants sued off.
Here’s a post in the official Spool.fm forums by user rishi:
Therefore, I’m listening to copyrighted music uploaded by a user to a website that allows me to pick and choose which copyrighted songs I want to listen to . The end user controls access to the exact music they want to listen to, while the company streaming (your company) doesn’t have a contract with the producers to broadcast in this manner.
This is almost certainly illegal .
On a side note, the site is quite impressive to me, because of the software aspect of it: almost none of the site is in flash, most of the special effects are done with ajax, the streaming is fast and efficient considering the quality of the music, and it is just so easy to use. Spool.fm is truly impressive, and I hope it isn’t knocked out of commission by the RIAA immediately.
Woah, that’s exactly what I’ve been wanting!