A two week old music streaming site, Wefre, has announced that until further legal research is done, it will close access to its music streaming platform. Initially, the Spanish-based team didn"t think that they were breaking any laws because they were providing the service through YouTube"s and Spotify"s official APIs for developers. Wefre claimed that they created the service whilst fulfilling the terms of use of those APIs.
Wefre"s ease of use and huge range of music attracted a lot of attention. They received thousands of tweets on Twitter from new users thanking them for the service, but some others pointed out that they may be breaking the law. In its announcement, Wefre wrote "We want to point [out] that we haven"t received any official warning from Google or Spotify, we never wanted to profit at the expense of the artists and, before making a huge mistake, we want to seek advice in a smarter way."
By "seek advice in a smarter way", they mean that they"re now pro-actively getting in contact with YouTube and Spotify to clarify whether or not its service is an acceptable use of the prior"s APIs.
Along with the postponement of its website, it has also closed its Kickstarter campaign which they were using to raise money for the development of an Android and iOS app.
Wrapping up their announcement, the team behind Wefre reiterated that they"re just three people - students and workers - whose plan isn"t to take advantage of others, but to just provide a "really good streaming music service". Once they"ve clarified whether their service is legal, they"ve promised to come back "with new features, stronger and without technical problems."
