Go ahead and put Coldplay on your MySpace page

By Eriq Gardner

Allowing users on social network sites like Facebook and MySpace to embed music into their profiles was a fast-growing business until some of the major record labels started shouting about copyright infringement and demands to be paid royalties.

Now one of the popular embed music services, Project Playlist, is climbing itself out of a litigation ditch by making some crafty deals. After finding some respectability by hiring former Facebook executive Owen Van Natta as its CEO in November, the company signed a license agreement with Sony BMG the following month. Still, Project Playlist faced lawsuits by Warner, EMI, and UMG and had its widgets banned by Facebook and MySpace.

Now, Project Playlist has announced it has settled with one of the plaintiffs, EMI, allowing EMI artists like Coldplay and the White Stripes to be embedded by the some 10.4 million Playlist fans. Figuring out a way to monetize the embedding of music is another story. Competitor Last.FM has struggled with this, announcing yesterday that it would be charging subscriptions to international users.

Meanwhile, in other Facebook news, the company has hired a former ACLU privacy lawyer, Timothy Sparapani, to counsel on the company's many privacy issues.