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

Comments

[Sarah]

I am really trying to find a music widget for "The Very Thought of You" by Billie Holiday. Can you please help?

[Katya]

Please, help me to find some music of Will Millar. I was listening it here and I miss it very much!

[ava]

Hey the new Ava Leigh single mad about the boy is out and available to buy on I tunes and your local HMV or check out avaleigh.co.uk

[esaú albanez]

muy biem tu blog.

[mascali]

Thanks for your great music...

[Raindance]

:_(

[Jaffir]

I'm yours

[Gardenax]

What? It can't be over. Everyone waited, you can't just put it down. How can you guys close. Is there like a slight chance it might come back?

[Taylor Trask]

I found this via your comment reference in TechCrunch. I'll reiterate here as I did there, this is an incredibly troubling situation - the major gatekeepers of an entire industry have one of the most applicable and wide-reaching methods to expose and promote their product, and instead they refuse it.

Its the moral equivalent of giving a starving man food, only to see him toss it in the trash and then charge you $50 for a piece of bread that you gave to him!

[Gerd Leonhard]

Couldn't agree more, Taylor -- thanks for the comment!