I'm launching www.magnatune.com later this month. It is an Internet record label which embraces file trading and MP3 radio in order to get its artists the widest possible exposure.

I'd like to be able to distribute files over gnutella as playlists that are then automatically played in Limewire as the files are downloaded. LimeWire has almost all the features needed to do this, and it should be a very easy modification.

Specifically, two new features needed to be added to LimeWire

- option to automatically add mp3 files to its media player playlist and play them as they download.

- a playlist file format. This could be as simple as supporting a URI-List version of magnet: uri (ie, a CRLF delimited text file) or something more sophisticated such as the RSS format. Clicking a magnetlist: uri in a web browser would launch LimeWire, which would begin downloading the indicated files, and playing them as they come in.

My reasons for using gnutella are:

1) inexpensive internet radio. While I have 20mbits at my disposal, that won't go very fair providing 128k icecast streams, but should be plenty as a gnutella ultrapeer.

2) avoid RIAA streaming fees - sharing files via gnutella is not streaming, and thus not RIAA taxable

3) wider exposure for the music, if the mp3s end up on people's computers, where they can listen to them again and again, w/o needing to redownload them.

I believe that the features I'm describing would be widely useful, and would continue to keep Limewire in its pre-eminent position.

-john