Sonific Goes Offline on May 1 2008

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

A few more things:

FOR OUR USERS

• If you want to comment on this announcement please email us go the Sonific Blog
• If you are a Sonific user, please note that you need to remove the widget code from your sites and blog posts asap otherwise there will be empty spots on your pages when we turn the streaming off on May 1, 2008 
  
• If you want to keep on playing music on your website, here (below) are a few great resources you can go to and pick whatever works for you (please note that we don't make any representations on the legal status of any of the offerings listed here):

1049 Facebook Music Apps

Mashable List of Music2.0 providers

FOR OUR SONIFIC.NET MUSIC PROVIDERS

If you have provided your own music to Sonific.net we very much apologize for the trouble but we cannot continue to provide this service for you.

Please take a look at this list to see if they can offer similar services.

Reverbnation

Rcrdlbl

We7

Comments

[Gerd Leonhard]

we are still working on a few possibilities to bring Sonific back; in any case, if it does it will look quite different - stay tuned! Gerd Leonhard CEO, www.gerdleonhard.com

[Penguinluva]

so will sonific ever come back? 'cause it's been a while and I don't think it's coming back. oh well...I can live with out it I think

[Ann @ Holy Experience]

I wish I kept track of all the emails from my blog readers who bought the CDs of the musicians whose songs I played in the sonific widget on my blog. Truly, at Christmas, there were so many who noted that they purchased the music for family.

And dozens and dozens of emails from people asking:
~who is the artists for these songs (I always gave the link to Amazon)
~and now, WHERE DID YOUR MUSIC GO?

I would happily, gladly pay a monthly service fee to continue to play the music at my blog... women said they would come to just listen to the music and rock their babies to sleep.

You people had a beautiful thing happening here.

I sincerely hope you find a way to continue. People were discovering artists and BUYING their music.

I wish you all the best.
You made a difference....

[Gracie Berkshire]

This is one of the saddest times for me personally. I used Sonific music imbeds liberally throughout my eBay store and the music droves my sales 5 to 1 over listings which did not have music imbeds. Music built passion into the listings which moved my buyers as much as it moved me searching for just the right song for just the right listing. My store feels dead now, so empty, without my Sonific bubble players.
My landing page seems flat, instead of the once, incredibly bouncy, super strange fun multi-dimensional edge it once had with Sonific streaming some kind of James Bond-goes-surfer-circus-psycho music.
I once wrote to Gerd and asked if he was set up to accept PayPal donations as I recognized the HUGE benefits Sonific offered to me as a store operator and how the music imbeds really helped to drive sales and he kindly replied that no money was necessary but letting others know about Sonific would be a big help. So I turned countless people on to Sonific.com and they all found it as addictive and easy to use as I did.
I WANT MY SONIFIC.COM BACK AND I WANT IT NOW! I literally cried when the music died. I know of these frustrations in which Gerd talks about. If a corporate head thinks he can possibly squeeze some money out of a new tech idea---always with the "well, what do I get outta this"---then sure enough---their attempt to bleed green out of tech-savvy-entrepreneurs MOST ALWAYS SPELLS DOOM for those of us who just want to FEEL life. Music is as close to feeling life as any sensory modality can offer the human race.
And you know who drives all this? Corporate-in-house-legal teams. They could care less about being passionate and alive. Sharks, snakes, whatever you wanna call them. Misery is their name--misery is their game.

[Ana Puerto R]

This legal decision is so sad and primitive!
Arts should be free and accessible for people around the planet.
True artists are moved to create by passion, and that passion belongs to who craves its message and captures its essence.
Be happy!

[Nancy Bond]

I'm very sorry to see Sonific SongSpot go -- I've enjoyed it very much for only a couple of weeks, but it has added so much to my blog.

Best of luck.

[Yanni]

I'm so sad to hear about you shutting down~! I've only become a member for a month or so.. and loving it.. only to find that it's gonna be gone..

I hope the music companies stop working in the past and come to the future of internet music. And I hope you guys will be back soon!

[Bonnie]

I'm so sorry to hear that Sonific SongSpot will no longer be available. It is usually the first thing I put on every morning when I entered my blog. On it I discovered some real favorites. You will really be missed and I hope you can find a solution.

[Raman]

Sonific Songspot definitely livened up my blog. It is really sad that the music mafia is arm twisting such innovative service providers. You absence would certainly be a great loss to music loving bloggers like me.

I wish I could do something for you guys, I may be able to do something for you guys. Just that I do not know what.

But you'll definitely rock wherever you go.

Good luck & god bless.

[Michael Borges]

I already commented on your Media Futurist page, but I wanted to add another thought or two. We have created a widget at Licensequote.com that will enable artists and labels to offer licensing terms and quotes for various uses including also commercial and non-commercial blogs and many other standard and custom license types.

Eventually music users and the media industry will be able to license music directly from their favorite artists or labels for all kinds of uses. License buyers can also request custom bids and quotes depending on their exact intended usage. The basic service is Free and later we'll add some very affordable upgrades for serious artists and publishers.

Please let your favorite music artists and labels know about this new service we provide. Thanks! Michael Borges
http://www.licensequote.com
http://www.musiclicensequote.com

[Michael Borges]

I already commented on your Media Futurist page, but I wanted to add another thought or two. We have created a widget at Licensequote.com that will enable artists and labels to offer licensing terms and quotes for various uses including also commercial and non-commercial blogs and many other standard and custom license types.

Eventually music users and the media industry will be able to license music directly from their favorite artists or labels for all kinds of uses. License buyers can also request custom bids and quotes depending on their exact intended usage. The basic service is Free and later we'll add some very affordable upgrades for serious artists and publishers.

Please let your favorite music artists and labels know about this new service we provide. Thanks! Michael Borges
http://www.licensequote.com
http://www.musiclicensequote.com

[Prateek]

Hi

I came to know of sonific today only and I must says its really sad that you guys had problems when you were actually trying to do everything legally. Its so true that sometimes so many services take off because of piracy. We face some of the issues trying to keep our online music community Muziboo.com clean and yet growing at a good pace.

I wish you good luck in your future efforts

Regards
Prateek Dayal

[Yheye]

Hi! I'm a photographer with the same passion for music and I can't imagine my blog without sonific. I discovered more wonderful songs through your service and even bought them. I'm not sure if others can provide the same services as you do guys.

I understand that you have to make a decision such this. It saddens me though (and definitely a lot of users as well)... :(

Still wishing you all the best and may we hear good news soon!

God Bless!

Yheye

[Butterfly]

Hi,

I just heared about the sad news!

Since I started my blog I used sonific widget to have a background music to my posts.

Most of my blog visitors said that sometimes they visit my blog just to listen to the beautiful music I choose from sonific.

My visitors and I learned about many musicians from your site and I bought some of these artists CDs after listening to them from your website. I even wrote emails to some of these artists to ask them to upload more of their work in sonific.

It is a sad thing now that sonific will go offline, I can't imagine my blog without the nice music.

I want to thank you for the fantastic service you have been provided to your users. I was really impressed with your prompt feedback and replies to my emails.

You rock guys .. I wish you all the best and will keep reading your blog. Hope there will be some good news.

Best wishes and THANK YOU.

[J C Wind]

I am writing to show how much I appreciate what you have done for me and my blog.
I am a writer and translator, and definitely a music lover. I keep a personal blog to release the stress of writing, purely non-commercially.
I always put background music to my articles to encourage music listening & appreciation. Due to copyright issues, I removed all the music files which I previously uploaded from my CDs to my blog, last year, coincidently around May.
Since then, I have been writing to musicians to obtain permissions for sharing their music.
You could imagine the delight I got when I discovered your service. There are some lots of beautiful classical pieces that I could introduce to my friends.
I appreciate all the hard work you've been through to maintain this service. And I understand that you must have done your very best. It is a sad thing to know that you'd have to face that final truth. Thanks for months of great company. I am really grateful.
Good luck and God bless you all.
Jean