HP buys mobile music company Melodeo

From CNET News.com: Computer giant Hewlett-Packard has acquired Melodeo, a Seattle-based start-up that specializes in music applications and services for mobile devices, the companies confirmed on Wednesday.

Terms of the deal weren't disclosed, but an anonymous source told TechCrunch that the price was around $30 million. The acquisition vaults HP into the battle for mobile music services.

Nutsie (the name is an anagram of iTunes) runs on several mobile platforms, and gives users a way to get music from the iTunes library on their computer to a mobile device over the air. Unfortunately, the current version of Nutsie only allows users to transfer iTunes playlists, not full libraries, and users can't navigate to single songs. It's more like Internet radio based on each user's personal iTunes library than true portability.

This was supposed to be fixed in the update I saw, which would let users upload their entire iTunes libraries to Nutsie's servers, then let Android phones access those full libraries over the air. Basically, Melodeo was building an online music locker, like what MP3Tunes offers. It sounded like a great solution for Android's weak spot in music, and I even speculated that Google might acquire Melodeo. But the updated Nutsie app hasn't come out yet, and when I contacted a spokesman about two weeks ago, he told me that Melodeo had some big news coming up that was delaying its product plans. This was it.

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