5 Hypebot Questions With MyBlogTunes

MyBlogTunes is a nifty application that adds free customized music streams to a blog or web site with amazing ease.  Currently in beta we asked co-founder Jesse Harding to answer a few questions:

1) Tell us a bit about yourself and the company: I’ve been a web designer for about 10 years, and I pretend to specialize in Flash and multimedia design.

My buddy, Dan Smith (aka Dmode) and I used to share new music with each other by emailing it back and forth. One day we came up with the idea of uploading our songs and creating streaming playlists through a Flash app. The very next day Dmode messaged me with a link to his working prototype of what we had been talking about. 2 years (and 200+ cases of Mtn Dew AMP) later, we finally have our player.

2) When do you expect to have MyBlogTunes out of beta and available with a full song selection?  Our time-line shows us launching the full version this July, but we have gotten a really good response since our beta launch last week and are hoping to launch earlier than that.

More after the jump including how to get your music on MyBlogTunes.

3) Is MyBlogTunes taking care of all licensing issues and payments? The short answer is yes. The issue is we are kind of breaking new ground with our "many to many" broadcast concept. ASCAP, BMI and the other licensing agencies don’t have anything in place right now that is a perfect fit for our business model. Legality and licensing will of course be handled before we launch the full version.

4) Since the service is free what is the revenue model? It’s tough to try to make money off something you are really passionate about without feeling like a sellout. We do have a revenue model including some really minimal advertising, and a "Pro" version of the player that has more features. We’ll be carefully adopting those with the version 1 launch.

5) How do independent musicians make music available for play via MyBlogTunes? I’m glad you asked that. Our new home page design (launching Memorial Day weekend) will have a form for artists and labels to submit their work. The great thing about this is first, we’ll all get to check out some great, possibly less-known music, plus we can set up agreements with the artist/label individually which will eliminate the ASCAP licensing issue.

Bonus Question: What do you see and hear in music and the music industry that excites you? I look forward to the day when indie artists and labels will be able to completely promote themselves effectively and still actually come out on top financially. I think this will come sooner than we might expect. We see myBlogTunes as one tool that indies can use to get their music in the headphones of people who might not have heard it otherwise.

What do I hear that excites me? My music taste is so random. I just bought the Gnarls Barkley CD which is the craziest, newest thing I’ve heard since the Gorillaz first came out. I’m digging the Arctic Monkeys, Matt Pond PA, and Panic! at the Disco as well.