Erwin Oliva
INQUIRER.net

ADMIT it. Your musical taste is largely influenced by friends or at least people close to you. And you often want to share it with everyone or at least to those who share your taste. That is essentially the idea behind Blip.fm.

“Music discovery is social,” says Jeff Yasuda, CEO and co-founder of Blip.fm, a tab service originally under the Fuzz.com website. (Actually, Yasuda’s card reads Founder and CEO of Fuzz Artists Inc.,’ which is an independent music label).

Calling himself a former “bean counter” (read Investment Banker) and a VC (venture capitalist), Yasuda and his co-founder Brian Venneman set up Blip.fm out of their love for music — of course, they believe there’s business in the social aspect of music discovery now that you have the Internet as your platform.

“I’ve been in a band since I was 13 years old,” says Yasuda as we talked in his music-filled room that he calls his office. Everywhere you look, there is music. There’s an exclusive photo of Pearl Jam’s frontman Eddie Vedder wearing a wig and a rather funny and amusing photo of Yasuda and his funky band and a lone fan listening.

Yasuda has a vast collection of music posters of various concerts and known musicians, which gives away his own musical taste. Of course, his first guitar was hanging on one wall, reminding him about his roots. He describes Blip.fm and Fuzz as his second baby — the first is a cute child whose photos are also on his desk.

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HERE’S some bad news for Pandora lovers in the Philippines and most likely every other listener outside the US. I got an e-mail from its founder, Tim Westergren, who announced that listeners from the country will be blocked from its streaming servers because they still have to secure international licenses.

It says that Filipino users will be blocked from accessing the service starting May 3. This is bad news indeed. At this writing, it appears I still have access to the service.

Here’s his e-mail:

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I RECENTLY received an e-mail from the people behind Pandora. They’ve confirmed some of my suspicions that they’re going international.

Just a background: I e-mailed them to ask why they petitioned against a bill that aims to increase the royalty fees of music played by Internet radio services.

I hope to share their response to our query on why Pandora did not include foreign listeners as possible supporters of their petition. The petition is only open to US listeners.

Thanks so much for your offer of support; we really appreciate it. It’s nice to hear that you love music as much as we do.

Sorry we’re not licensed internationally yet! Legally offering Pandora services to listeners outside of the United States is a top priority for us, and we’re working out the details as fast as we can. Audio content streaming regulations differ from country to country, and we are working on acquiring the proper licenses to accommodate them.

We’re really looking forward to making Pandora an international service in every respect, including adding more international music to our collection. In many ways, that’s when Pandora will really start to reach its potential.

Cheers, and thanks for your support,

Lucia, Tim, and the whole Pandora team

Lucia Willow
Listener Advocate @ Pandora

THERE is a petition out (mainly directed at US listeners) that hopes to save Pandora and other Internet radio services. Pandora is a project of the Music Genome Project. I was introduced to this service almost two months ago. It is a unique Internet radio service not only because it is free, but also allows you to connect and find new music through its intelligent search feature.

This is the e-mail I got from its founder, urging people to support a petition against plans to jack up licensing fees for Internet radio services.

The broadcast e-mail I received from founder Tim Westergren as early as April 18 begins:

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