Let music lead the way

It's been a roller-coaster month for Project Playlist, a popular local start-up that lets users create playlists of songs scattered around the Internet. Last week, the company's service was booted from MySpace, cutting it off from much of its clientele. On Monday, it announced its first deal with a major record company, Sony BMG. And on Tuesday, its playlist-building application was expelled from Facebook. This one-step-forward, two-steps-back routine shows how hard it continues to be for the music industry and entrepreneurs to adapt to a world in which recordings proliferate online, beyond the copyright owners' control.

December 26, 2008