Just Hear It Streams Legal Music For Free

The newest music search engine Just Hear It! searches the web for any song, and lets you stream audio or video for free. To top it off, the company pays for licenses from all the major performing-rights organizations, so there’s no reason to worry about recent copyright lawsuits.

Just Hear It turns up complete and sometimes surprising results. Less known covers, remixes, and live performances are culled from YouTube and the web, and there’s always the option to either view the video, or continue searching while you listen. In fact, the core search function seems to consistently find music on YouTube; most likely because parent company Google is so friendly with the recording industry.

Users can create playlists and save them to an account, but accounts are currently available by invitation only, and the framework is still a pre-launch version. However, the perfect music site, the global jukebox, is there. Right now, songs are shareable on Facebook, Twitter and Digg, but it’s reasonable to assume that future updates would expand the service’s social networking functionality.

Just Hear It is made in Flash, with a simple design. The site doesn’t seem be advertising anything, so I have trouble imagining how the company pays licensing fees. But the sleek, spotless design allows for music to be searched and streamed quickly, without any distractions. If the site can be profitable while paying publishers and writers in proportion to number of plays, then it might last. But how do they make money?

According to a study by The Swedish Performing Rights Society, the top reasons why people share music on P2P networks are: free access, ease of use and portability. With two out of three, it’s entirely possible that, with a few updates, Just Hear It could easily surpass other streaming sites in popularity. In terms of consistently getting the desired song in as few clicks as possible, this is the best I’ve seen. Still, it remains to be seen how the company profits, so let’s hope it survives.

Does it beat other services like Pandora, Myspace, and Last.fm? Will it convince P2P users?

Source: CNET, Billboard