Webjay

Webjay was a web-based playlist service launched in early 2004. Playlists consisted of links to Vorbis, MP3, WMA, RealAudio and/or other audio files on the web. Webjay users could create new playlists by copying from existing playlists, or by web scraping audio file links from external web pages or playlists. The site was created by Lucas Gonze.

Yahoo! announced its acquisition of Webjay on January 9, 2006. It closed down the Webjay site at the end of June, 2007.

Web scraping portions of Webjay were incorporated into the Yahoo! products Yahoo! Media Player and Easy Listener.

The Webjay logo was created by Perri Harper.

Copyright issues

Although Webjay did not host any files, it made an effort to avoid potential copyright disputes by removing links upon request of the content or host owner. The site's copyright policy included this statement:

Explanations by third parties

A July 15, 2004 story in ''The New York Times'' titled "Multimedia Scrapbooks to Share" described the site this way:

A March 30, 2004 story in Jon Udell's blog titled "Blogs + playlists = collaborative listening" described the site this way:

An April 22, 2004 story in ''The New York Times'' described the site this way:

Relationship to XSPF

The XSPF playlist format evolved from Webjay in the following way.

Webjay predated the common practice (in 2008) of having a web playlist be edited and managed by a single site, then exported to other sites with a Flash widget that can play the playlist.

Playlists on Webjay were played by generating a text file in one of a variety of common playlist formats, including ASX, SMIL, and M3U. The playlist file contained a list of URLs of multimedia files from different third party sites. The playlists were downloaded to a client-side media player like Windows Media Player, RealAudio, QuickTime, or Winamp. The client-side media player would play the URLs one after another, giving the cumulative impression of a single continuous stream.

After the XSPF playlist format came into existence and before any media players could render an XSPF playlist, Webjay added the ability to generate an XSPF file for any playlists on the site. It did not provide a player, only playlists, so at first the files could not be played. An independent developer created an XSPF player known as XSPF Musicplayer. It did not provide playlists. Webjay and XSPF Musicplayer were independent products that were only useful as a pair. Another independent developer created a web site to put Webjay and XSPF Musicplayer together. This site was called "Webjay Wizard".

Because XSPF Musicplayer is written in Flash it can be used in the browser without launching a client-side multimedia player like Windows Media Player. As a result, it was used to embed music in pages on social networking sites such as Myspace, as a Web widget. This created popular demand for XSPF.

Other XSPF players came into being to compete with XSPF Musicplayer. When Webjay was closed down by Yahoo!, other XSPF editing and generation tools took its place. XSPF continued to exist.

References

External links

* {{official website, http://webjay.org/
Video interview of Lucas Gonze by Zadi Diaz of EPIC FU
weekly web show that covers online pop culture (September 4, 2008)

American music websites
Discontinued Yahoo! services
Yahoo! acquisitions