The competition, 1999
The independent-music web of summer 1999, as ListenSmart.com saw it: 24 sites the plan expected to compete with for artists and listeners.
The “Competition” chapter of the 1999 business plan lists the sites “with whom we would most likely be competing with for artist & listener traffic.” Most of the plan’s entries are drawn from the companies’ own descriptions and the press of the day. Below, each is summarized in our words, with a link to the site as the Wayback Machine saw it in 1999. Where a cited source confirms what happened next, that is added; otherwise it is left out.
The plan didn’t count companies selling other audio formats (AT&T’s a2b, IBM, Liquid Audio, Microsoft, RealNetworks) as competition, since there would always be one dominant standard. It saw Amazon.com and CDNow as possible future competitors, and AOL, Excite, Infoseek, Lycos and Yahoo! as “potential symbiotic partners.” Sean asked new staff to “Visit their sites repeatedly” (Employee Handbook, 1999).
AMP3.com
One of the fastest-growing MP3 sites, mixing start-up musicians with known names. Its difference: every artist was paid for every download, funded by a short advertiser jingle added to the start of each song. Pay ran from 5 cents a download to 10 cents when an advertiser bought a genre and up to 25 cents with an artist sponsor. The plan counts more than 3,000 artists and 370,000 downloads since its March 1999 launch, and an AMP3 CD program in the works with a 60/40 split.
www.amp3.com in 1999 (Wayback Machine)
Audio Explosion / Mjuice.com
A San Francisco company founded in 1997 that sold MP3 songs on Mjuice.com in its own secure, watermarked format, so a purchased song played only on software and devices that supported the format. Mjuice launched in February 1999.
www.mjuice.com in 1999 (Wayback Machine)
Audioactive.com
A product of Telos Systems, the broadcast-audio company, for creating and publishing MPEG audio on the Internet at radio quality. A tools vendor more than a music destination.
www.audioactive.com in 1999 (Wayback Machine)
Audiohighway.com
A Nasdaq-listed company in Cupertino, California, with one of the largest libraries of free audio online: audiobooks, music, news and more across 10 channels, in MP3 and its own AudioWiz format. In July 1999 it announced an audiobooks channel pilot on WindowsMedia.com.
www.audiohighway.com in 1999 (Wayback Machine)
AudioLiner.com / Noisebox.com
Music in many formats (MP3, MP2, Liquid Audio, a2b, VQF, QuickTime) on a Shockwave Flash site. Quoting Wired News (March 1999), the plan says the site paid artists five cents per download and Noisebox paid them 15–20 percent of advertising revenue.
www.noisebox.com in 1999 (Wayback Machine)
Audiosurge.com
Run by The Digital Music Company of Syracuse, New York, founded by 20-year-old James Milton. It launched audiosurge.com and buymp3.com in March 1999: free artist pages and downloads on one site, MP3 sales on the other.
www.audiosurge.com in 1999 (Wayback Machine)
Billboard Talent Net
Billboard’s professional online showcase for new artists, where acts posted repertoire hoping for recording, publishing or management deals. Billboard said more than 2,000 music and entertainment companies were registered users, major labels among them.
www.billboardtalentnet.com in 1999 (Wayback Machine)
CDuctive.com
A New York site selling licensed MP3s from more than 300 independent labels in dance/electronic, indie rock and hip-hop, distributed through more than 60 online partners. The plan gives its 1998 revenue as $300,000.
What happened: Acquired by EMusic.com in December 1999. Source: Wikipedia: EMusic (Cductive)
www.cductive.com in 1999 (Wayback Machine)
Epitonic.com
Founded in San Francisco in January 1999, with editors licensing what they saw as the best music from quality independent labels. Its files were plain MP3s with no copy protection; it planned to split profits with the artists or labels and keep about 10 percent of the site for free promotional music.
What happened: Acquired by Palm Pictures in 2003 and closed in 2004; relaunched in 2011. Source: Wikipedia: Epitonic
www.epitonic.com in 1999 (Wayback Machine)
GetSigned.com
Mostly an information resource for independent artists, with a few hosted MP3s and links to many other MP3 and independent-music sites.
www.getsigned.com in 1999 (Wayback Machine)
GoodNoise / EMusic.com
Incorporated in January 1998 to sell music by download, and renaming itself EMusic.com. It sold MP3 tracks for 99 cents and albums for $8.99, with acts such as They Might Be Giants and Frank Black. The plan notes revenue of just $41,527 since inception.
What happened: Bought by Universal Music, then part of Vivendi Universal, in 2001. It still runs as a subscription download store. Source: Wikipedia: EMusic
www.emusic.com in 1999 (Wayback Machine)
Guitar.com
A Chicago community for guitarists with more than 50,000 members: free pages for artists and teachers, a searchable MP3 database, discussion boards, lessons and products.
www.guitar.com in 1999 (Wayback Machine)
IUMA, the Internet Underground Music Archive
Founded in 1993, the first site to let unsigned musicians promote and sell their music on the web. More than 3,500 artists had their own pages at bandname.iuma.com, with streams, downloads and sales. It had just merged with EMusic.com.
What happened: Closed to new submissions in 2001 when EMusic downsized; the site disappeared in 2006. Much of its collection was reposted on the Internet Archive in 2012. Source: Wikipedia: Internet Underground Music Archive
www.iuma.com in 1999 (Wayback Machine)
Licensemusic.com
Led by Gerd Leonhard, an online service for licensing music to TV, film, advertising and interactive productions, representing more than 100 labels and publishers. The closest model for the plan’s own SyncSmart.com.
www.licensemusic.com in 1999 (Wayback Machine)
Listen.com
Founded in December 1998 by Rob Reid and open since June 21, 1999: a directory of legal downloads across the web, with reviews, a rating system and a categorization of “nearly 600 music genres”. The October 1999 investor report calls it “NOT a competitor of ours, but rather a potential symbiotic partner.”
What happened: Launched Rhapsody, a flat-fee streaming subscription service, on December 3, 2001; acquired by RealNetworks in 2003. Source: Wikipedia: Rhapsody / Napster
www.listen.com in 1999 (Wayback Machine)
MP3.com
The biggest of them, and the plan’s main point of comparison: free music and mail-order CDs from 11,000 acts and 56,000 songs, a DAM CD label splitting sales 50/50 with artists, and 165,000 unique visitors a day (Wired News, January 1999). 1998 revenue: $1.16 million.
What happened: Went public on July 21, 1999; acquired by Vivendi Universal in 2001. CNET bought the name in 2003 and shut down the original service on December 2, 2003. Source: Wikipedia: MP3.com
www.mp3.com in 1999 (Wayback Machine)
MusicBuilder.com (formerly MP3vault.com)
Free artist pages with MP3 uploads and automatic search-engine submission, “Virtual Artist CDs” made to order, a sounds-like search, a gig calendar and discussion forums.
www.musicbuilder.com in 1999 (Wayback Machine)
MusicMaker.com
Custom CD compilations from more than 150,000 licensed tracks, made within 24 hours of an order. The plan reprints Red Herring on its July 1999 IPO, which raised $117.6 million for a company with about $74,000 in 1998 revenue, and concludes that such a model is hard to make profitable.
www.musicmaker.com in 1999 (Wayback Machine)
MusicMatch
A San Diego company whose MusicMatch Jukebox, introduced in May 1998, the plan calls the world’s best-selling MP3 software, downloaded by about 3 million people in six months.
What happened: Acquired by Yahoo in October 2004; Yahoo shut the service down in 2007. Source: Wikipedia: Musicmatch Jukebox
www.musicmatch.com in 1999 (Wayback Machine)
NewTechMusic.com
A Silicon Valley “digital label” founded in August 1998 by former Intel executive Pedro Vargas. It signed artists to partnership deals paying them half the profits, and in May 1999 agreed to supply songs to RealNetworks’ RealJukebox.
www.newtechmusic.com in 1999 (Wayback Machine)
Riffage.com
Launched June 7, 1999 by Ken Wirt, formerly of Diamond Multimedia and the Rio player. It took only 15 percent of artists’ e-commerce sales where others took about half, planning to make up the difference with advertising, and offered personalized recommendations, member pages and playlists.
www.riffage.com in 1999 (Wayback Machine)
Rollingstone.com
Listed by the plan with no profile. Its “Download This” section, with Tunes.com, reviewed downloads by little-known acts (see Tunes.com).
What happened: Tunes.com, which operated Rollingstone.com, was acquired by EMusic.com in December 1999. Source: Wikipedia: EMusic
www.rollingstone.com in 1999 (Wayback Machine)
Songs.com
A Nashville “virtual record store” formed in 1995 for more than 300 professional independent musicians, from acoustic and Americana to pop, rock and R&B.
www.songs.com in 1999 (Wayback Machine)
Tunes.com
Formerly JAMTV: a music hub with genre programming made with Rolling Stone, The Source and Down Beat, whose critics reviewed and recommended downloads by unknown acts.
What happened: Acquired by EMusic.com in December 1999. Source: Wikipedia: EMusic
www.tunes.com in 1999 (Wayback Machine)
Where ListenSmart.com placed itself
Against this field the plan claimed a mix no one else offered: everything free to download; artists paid from advertising as well as sales; a publishing partnership for artists who wanted one; and Learn pages and a genre guide to help listeners find music they would like. Its October 1999 investor report followed two of these rivals closely, AMP3.com’s dollar-a-download promise and MP3.com’s auctions of featured spots (see the report). Listen.com’s 600-genre directory is compared with ListenSmart.com’s own guide in the Genre Guide.
Sources: “ListenSmart.com, LLC Master Document” (business plan, summer 1999), Competition chapter; figures are the plan’s, as of mid-1999. ListenSmart.com investor report, October 10, 1999 (Listen.com). “What happened” notes: Wikipedia articles as linked. Archived sites: Internet Archive Wayback Machine. The plan lists 24 sites; earlier drafts combined Tunes.com and Rollingstone.com.