Muxtape relaunching soon, in the service of bands (it says)

An update on Muxtape was just published on their site: Muxtape. My previous Muxtape-related posts are here. It totally amazes (but not surprises) me how much Justin's story is similar to my own experiences with Sonific, my last digital music startup, and how much it matches with the stories I keep hearing from dozens of brave if maybe somewhat 'fresh' digital music entrepreneurs every single day: you bring golden ideas to the record industry and they will act like it's dirt - simply because it means they will need to share the control. Most of the major label execs will eagerly suck up all the information you can give them only to then a) drop all communications and reverse-engineer what you do b) present you with terms that would make Stalin look like an altruist. Muxtape draws the right conclusion: start from scratch, directly with the artists. But - how will they retain a sizable audience with just that?  This is the Sonific, Jamendo, Reverbnation problem... Also see my post on the MidemNetBlog, on Muxtape.

Legal digital music is commercial suicide says Michael Robertson (The Register)

If you are interested in the digital music turf (well, yes, ehem.... is there any other?) this is a must-read: Legal digital music is commercial suicide | The Register. Michael Robertson gets it exactly right when he writes:

"Go legal and die
The internet companies I talk to don't mind giving some direct benefit to music companies. What torpedoes that possibility is the big financial requests from labels for "past infringement", plus a hefty fee for future usage. Any company agreeing to these demands is signing their own financial death sentence. The root cause is not the labels - chances are if you were running a label you would make the same demands, since the law permits it. The lack of clarity in the law is the real culprit - and it's the huge potential penalties that create an incentive for the big record labels' law firms to file lawsuits. Without clear laws and rulings from the court about what is permissible, every action touching a copyrighted work is a possible infringement, with a large financial windfall if the copyright owner can persuade a Judge to agree..."

If you want to know more, read what happened with my own company, Sonific, here.

A final comment on Sonific

This pretty much says it all (and, well, who should know better than him?): "I've come to the conclusion that revolutions aren't profitable." Kevin Kelly on the demise of Suck.com, a hotwired off-spring, 2001 (found here)

All together now (Dealscape)

Interesting if somewhat circular story about music widgets and... Sonific: All together now (Dealscape). Some nice quotes about me;)   [ignore the spelling of my name thru-out this column... it's LeonHard indeed]

"While some site developers say major labels are more receptive than a year ago, the industry isn't necessarily embracing the concept. Last week, Leonard announced he would unplug on May 1 Sonific, his music-related social network. In a statement on the site, Leonard rails against the labels, calling them "certifiably dysfunctional" and accusing them of making outrageous demands of "very large cash advances," "free equity" and imposing "utterly bizarre usage restrictions" in return for licenses..."

"While some musical superstars now migrate from major labels to everything from Starbucks to their own Web sites for distribution, traditional music giants face an even more fundamental problem: the commoditization of the recorded song. "Copying a song is free to do and free to get," Leonard says. "And you can't build a business on the basis of a copy."

Sonific Calls It Quits, Citing Music Licensing Issues | Listening Post from Wired.com

Nice post fro Eliot van Buskirk - he gets it: Sonific Calls It Quits, Citing Music Licensing Issues | Listening Post from Wired.com.

In music, the LongTail still won't work without a head and a body: Announcing big changes at Sonific (Over & Out)

Update: Sept 10, 2008: Sonific is over, for good. Thanks for waiting.

My music widget startup, Sonific, just announced that it is going offline on May 1. Below are some snippets from my announcement, all other details are on Sonific's blog, here.  This obviously a tough development but we are hoping that while this door may be closing now another may open up.

Sonific.com will go offline on May 1, 2008  A message by Gerd Leonhard, Co-Founder & CEO

As a consequence of a the unworkable music licensing situation and the resulting lack of solid revenue modeling Sonific's founders and investors have decided to temporarily take Sonific.com and Sonific.net offline.  While we are looking for other ways to realize our vision we are also open to talking to any interested party that may have use for Sonific's user base, content relationships, technologies or distribution network (please contact us anytime to find out more). Together with some other partners, we may also investigate the concept of making Sonific a paid-for service that is provided to artists, record labels and other content providers on a white-label basis.

Here are some background details on our decision:

1) There are countless startups providing access to any and all music streams without any license whatsoever. However, when we approached the major record label decision makers in order to obtain licenses for some of the music in their catalogs we have routinely faced demands for very large cash advances and fixed per-stream minimum payments, pressure to give them 'free' company equity, and requirements of utterly bizarre usage restrictions. It seems that the industry's major stakeholders still prefer this turf to remain unlicensed rather than to allow real-life, workable and market-based solutions to emerge by working with new companies such as Sonific. This is not the way forward.

2) We therefore had to realize that a company that wants to provide interactive streaming music services must either a) risk the constant complaints of their users, due to the lack of hit content  b) proceed to use any and all music (this is routinely done by allowing users to upload their own MP3s) without the required licenses, and therefore be at the total mercy of the record labels at some point in time, and c) build a huge audience very quickly, based on having the content available - permission or not -, and then very quickly sell themselves to a large company that will take care of placating the labels while the money is plenty and the pockets are deep. 

Unfortunately we don't like any of these choices. 

The bottom line is that this industry is certifiably dysfunctional and that we do not see a plausible path to take at this time. We neither want to engage in so-called copyright infringement nor do we have millions of dollars available to buy our way in when it is abundantly clear that doing business under the existing rules of the major labels will simply amount to economic suicide.

Almost a billion people now use music to stream on their blogs, social network pages, home-pages and user profiles – this is indeed a veritable gold mine for music marketing and selling, and it can make serious money for artists and composers. Yet, the established players in the music industry are still looking to simply squeeze 'permission fees' from companies that want to serve this market, instead of building new opportunities together.  Maybe, just like Radio over 100 years ago, a plausible conclusion may just be that this must apparently be done without permission while the industry catches up - but we shall leave this for others to explore this theme.

We want to thank all our partners and the many artists, independent record labels as well as the few major label new media people that dared to try us anyway, and the leading music aggregators that have provided the over 200.000 songs that Sonific has offered until now. We also want to thank our faithful users that played our music every day, and the over 80.000 people hat have signed up for our service, and we apologize for having to pull the plug on you. We hope to return in a different incarnation; please stay tuned via our blog.

Gerd Leonhard
Co-Founder & CEO

Update: if you are looking for alternatives to Sonific, try this list

Attack Of The Music Communities (via Crenk)

Good list here, also a nice review of my music widget company Sonific: Attack Of The Music Communities | Crenk.

"Sonific - is a social network that offers a great way to promote your music, if you are an artist. It lets users put a free music widgets with your music on their sites and promote it to their own audiences, for free. In exchange, Sonific users get free music to use and listen to (download is not permitted) and make their site look cooler - while you get free advertising for your music."

juanzelada: A good example of an artist using the Sonific songspot widget

Link: juanzelada.
This guy Juan uploaded his tracks on www.sonific.net, and now his own music is the soundtrack to his blog... check out what he's saying: great summary of how the web enables artists. Really.

"The Web gives us more volume, we can reach more people and we don’t rely on anybody else to do it. I look at the whole revolution in music as a busker with an amp that runs with a generator… Call me Edison. Anyway, I’m telling you all of this because I added a new Sonific Widget to the Blog… I got excited, I know. Sorry.

Breaking the Law To Get a Break (via Washingtonpost.com) - Sonific's challenge of making it work with 'legal' HIT content

Link: Breaking the Law To Get a Break - washingtonpost.com.

"...For many other start-ups, it's a tough trade-off to become legitimate. Like Imeem, Sonific, an online service that allows users to stream music to blogs or personal Web pages, is trying to strike licensing deals with large record labels to expand its music library, which now has about 250,000 tracks from smaller, independent labels. But Gerd Leonhard, the site's founder, said it cannot get the interest of labels because of its relatively small pool of 100,000 users. "Our major hurdle is that we're trying to do it legally," he said. "You're either forced to use the music without the proper permission or you just don't get your audience."

Nice to see that that Kim Hart (the Post writer) got this right. I have written about this a few times before: right now law-abiding startups like Sonific are essentially penalized and severely handicapped by the lack of clear licensing procedures and the major labels' outmoded business strategies.

Here are some more thoughts on this:

While there are countless startups providing any and all music catalogs under some 'fig-leaf' licenses or without any permission whatsoever (whether using streaming widgets or other means... nope, sorry, no names here;) the major record labels still manage to choke any intention to license their catalogs by demanding exceedingly large cash advances, insisting on fixed per-stream payments, asking for ‘free’ company equity to get deals done, and on top of it all want to impose bizarre usage restrictions. Mission impossible.

Clearly, they seem to prefer this turf to remain unlicensed rather than to allow workable market-based solutions to emerge. This behavior is killing a very powerful newly emerging ecosystem because one cannot operate a music-based service with just the 'longtail' content - a dog without a head simply does not walk, yet.

A startup such as Sonific that wants to provide interactive streaming 'music widget' services - and that will clearly need a large audience to be relevant - must either a) live with being constantly criticized by the users for the lack of hit content, and therefore not attain a sufficient audience b) proceed to use music without the required licenses, and therefore be at the total mercy of the record labels at some point in time, i.e. when they feel like dropping the ‘copyright infringement’ hammer c) build a huge audience very quickly, based on having all content available - permission or not -, and then quickly sell themselves to a large company that will take care of placating the labels while the money is plenty and the pockets are deep.

I don't know about you, out there, but none of these choices sound good to me.

Almost a billion people now use music to stream on their blogs, social network pages, home-pages and user profiles – this is indeed a veritable gold mine for music marketing. Yet, the established players in the music industry are still looking to simply squeeze 'permission fees' from companies that want to serve this market, instead of building a new market together. 

So... what do you think? Feel free to comment below!

PS: as far as some labels go there are notable exceptions to this behavior - check out Natasha Beddingfield on Sonific

SONIFIC SONGSPOT Music for BLOG � Father Joe

Here is a Sonific user making an interesting playlist: SONIFIC SONGSPOT Music for BLOG � Father Joe.

I will be presenting Sonific at the 2008 Midemnet Conference in Cannes next Sunday at 11 am (Jan 27)

If you are attending MIDEM come on by: Midemnet Conference - MIDEMWorld.

Sounds by Sonific -jamming induced blog haze (Sonific user review)

Link: Sounds by Sonific -> jamming induced blog haze. � Kryptikos’s Weblog.

Sonific Music Widget launches on Facebook!

We are thrilled to announce that Sonific's Music Application for Facebook has finally gone live today. If you are a Facebook user, just go here and start adding music to your profile; it's basically instant. We are delighted (and exhausted) to have this first version of our MusicAPI up-and-running, - any feedback you may have would be appreciated.

 

My Facebook profile is here, btw - if you want to connect, just ping me and be sure to mention my blog so that I can 'befriend' you quickly.  Sonific, which I have been fronting as CEO for the past 2 years, has over 200.000 really cool tracks available on this app, and they are all fully licensed, too ;). If you are searching for top 100 / chart tracks, though, you will not find a lot of them here, for now - most of the major labels have not graced us with their permission yet (but please don't get me started on that...).  Having said that, there are some really great exceptions, though, mostly from the UK  - check out the "Made in the UK' playlist in your default playlist folders, once you've added the app.

 

I will be publishing playlists with some of my favorite tracks on my Facebook profile, regularly, so keep on checking.  Note that if you are a musician or a label, you can also add your music to Sonific, (and thereby to Facebook, too) by just going to Sonific.net and uploading your own stuff - it's pretty much instant and free (naturally).

Some of my favorite artists on Sonific: Natasha Bedingfield, Mumm Ra, Sam Beeton, Groove Armada, Sandi Thom, Passenger, Mark Ronson and others

Ever since Sonific launched the cool playlist tool I have been making my own 'favorite' lists - I guess you could call them Channels since now I can basically publish up to 25 tracks this way. Sonific will be be expanding on this Channel concept very soon.. stay tuned.   And get your own, free, fully customizable playlists at Sonific!

Listen to my UK's best Channel - just hit the button below. Here is the tracklist, too

Sonific adds cool new Soundeffects by SoundSnap: add some thunder to your social network page ;)

We just added some really nice Sound-Effects and loops by SoundSnap, a really cool site that provides free sound effects and loops for online use.  Now you can add thunder, lightning, horror-loops or beach sounds to your blog, social network page, myspace profile etc. 

Here is a list of the 43+ sites we already support. Now it's up to you to make some noise.