JukeFly re-launches personal online music player

October 28, 2009 | Paul Boutin | Comments |
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jukeflyMusic services are popping up like daisies in October. Not Pirate Bay-style bootleg sites, but licensed services that let you listen to music without worring about being arrested. The latest is JukeFly, a San Jose-based startup originally launched last year, but now revamped to make online playing and sharing of personal playlists easy. The privately-funded company still only has 4 employees, all engineers.

Picture 8I have trouble tracking the differences between JukeFly, blip.fm, GrooveShark, imeem, Facebook Music, MySpace and whatever people are tweeting.

JukeFly emailed a response to my request for a differentiator:  ”JukeFly is the only free web app that combines the ability for members to listen to their own music or choose from an immense selection of music from all genres new and old, then save it and stream it all from a single site.”

Picture 7The only one? I have trouble believing that. I’m pretty sure imeem is based around the same two benefits. You get to listen to your uploaded music collection from any computer. The interface is uncluttered, and looks a lot like iTunes. “GrooveShark and imeem don’t allow you to stream your own music,” a company spokesperson replies.

JukeFly seems to be chasing the lazies rather than the obsessives. The company flaunts its library of licensed tunes, which save you from having to upload your own copies.

Founders Jeff Sidlosky and Dinesh Nair met while working at desktop search engine Tukaroo, which Ask Jeeves acquired as part of its attempt to build the ultimate desktop search engine in 2004.

Update: JukeFly just sent me the competitive landscape slide from their analyst presentation. It’s 100 percent biased, but it’s thorough:

    MP3 Players/Desktop Music Players (e.g. iPod, Winamp, Windows Media Player)

  • Little ability to discover new music, few social features
  • Limited advanced features like song lyrics, artist info, videos etc.

    • Remote access solutions (e.g. Orb)

  • Not a music focused solution
  • Usually requires home PC to be always available with no backup solution
  • No integrated player and limited advanced features like song lyrics, artist info, videos etc.

    • Internet Radio Stations (e.g. Last.fm, Pandora)

  • Cannot pick songs to play – only plays similar music in the form of a radio station
  • No option to stream your own music on their platform

    • Subscription based solutions (e.g. Spotify, lala.com)

  • No option to stream your own music on their platform
  • MP3 search engines (e.g. Songza.com, Deezer, Skreemr, Grooveshark)
  • Limited advanced features like song lyrics, artist info, videos etc.
  • No option to stream or enjoy your own music on their platform

The company considers GrooveShark, imeem and LaLa its closest competition.

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About the Author, Paul Boutin

Paul (paul@venturebeat.com) covers Apple & the iPhone, social networks & social media, digital music & video, and any crazy Internet story. Paul wrote and edited for Valleywag from 2006-2008, after several years with Wired magazine and Slate. He writes regularly for The New York Times' technology section and sometimes for Wired and The Wall Street Journal. He studied computer science at MIT in the early 1980s, and worked as a software developer and network administrator for 15 years before becoming a professional writer. Follow him on Twitter at @paulboutin, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.

  • grahammurphy
    Grooveshark not only lets me upload my favorite songs, but built an entire portal for my band to upload my material and then view analytics.

    These guys are obviously very detail-oriented and have painstakingly researched their "competitors". Oh wait, no they havent and this site sucks.
  • I love Grooveshark. They do in fact let you upload your own music to their database of over 25 million user-uploaded songs. I can create playlists that I can share across my networks or create custom widgets to embed them anywhere online (they are also dynamic widgets that track the changes I make the playlists). I can easily share the songs to Twitter, Facebook, etc. etc. etc. In addition, i can also go into any of my friends' lists and see what they're up to (much easier when compared to Pandora). I can favorite songs to add to my virtual library. I just got their desktop app and am loving that as well. Also, their "Share Song" app for Facebook is AMAZING! Share any song in your stream or a friends page and it will include a built in player

    That's on the listener side... Let's talk artist side now. Some people may balk at the "user uploaded" feature of the songs and say that it's ripping off artists. Well Grooveshark lets you go in and claim all those user uploaded songs. Then, unlike other streaming services (*cough Pandora *cough Myspace), I get a whole wealth of data and play info. I can see all my plays by day/week/month and see which songs are doing best. If I want to go even further I can setup an Autoplay Campaign to increase awareness of my songs.

    As an artist Grooveshark also tries to connect you to a whole host of outside valuable services by which you can help build your brand online, merch, reach fans, raise funding, land a deal, list tickets, expose your music, etc etc etc.

    Bottom line: Grooveshark is NOTHING like any of the streaming sites out there right now. Nowhere else will you find a better experience in online streaming music as a listener. Nowhere else will you find the type of information, tools, and support as an artist from a streaming music site.

    I love Groovshark... And that's a lot considering my Pandora profile:
    http://pandora.com/people/socialsoundsystem

    You guys want to talk TheSixtyOne.com too?
  • bob
    "which save you from having to upload your own copies"
    "GrooveShark and imeem don’t allow you to stream your own music"

    Grooveshark lets me upload my music, they don't. Do they check their facts? I upload my music and stream MY OWN music.
  • the URL goes to "jukefly" not "jukefly.com"
  • Is it just me or are "No option to stream your own music on their platform" and "No option to stream or enjoy your own music on their platform" bizarrely identical differentiators?
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