If you want your startup to fail, be involved with the recording industry.
To everything there is a season – Why we're shutting down
21–30 of 45 posts
Re: To everything there is a season – Why we're shutting down
#22> in early 2016, we were required to cut off streaming to listeners outside the US and Canada I didn't fully understand who it was that required 8tracks to stop streaming abroad, but I wholeheartedly hate them so much. It was my preferred music service, I loved discovering all sorts of playlists and new music, while I've always disliked the Spotify client. To see it dissappear, probably due to greed from royalty owne…
> due to greed from royalty owners somewhere
Expecting to be paid for your content is greed?
Re: To everything there is a season – Why we're shutting down
#23I'd love to know what Google offered for 8tracks back in 2013. If they reached nearly 8m MAU who streamed 30m+ hours each month, that's still basis for a pretty decent exit, no?
Re: To everything there is a season – Why we're shutting down
#24For me, 8tracks always was a prime example of a great user experience without "AI", "Big Data" or "Algorithms"
The user clicked on a few keywords and gets playlists which were tagged with these keywords. Worked better then spotifies automatically created playlists.
Re: To everything there is a season – Why we're shutting down
#25As a previous content creator, 8tracks was ergonomically hard to use and drove me away from trying to create more mixes. It's been a long while, but I recall having a lot of trouble ordering tracks (sometimes having to delete and re-upload all 8 tracks in perfect order), having trouble putting in metadata correctly, and the actively "we're afraid of copyrights" hostile presentation of my resulting work (hiding info from end users). I just disliked the entire experience, that much is memorable.
No time codes, could not list the tracks and times for curious listeners who wanted more, etc. - I ended up leaving self-comments on the mixes with all the various information because their UI and service would not let me present it as I wanted and listeners wanted. I ended up just walking away after the first half-dozen creations and moving on to a better service. For avid music aficiandos it was sub=par listening experience because of these hurdles, I didn't even like the phone app playing my own mixes. :(
Point is, failure of a company/solution is sometimes that it was just sub-par and wasn't engaged by users because there were better alternatives, and 8tracks (to me) was one of the sub-par content creation services. 100% opinion by an ex-member. :)
Re: To everything there is a season – Why we're shutting down
#26> in early 2016, we were required to cut off streaming to listeners outside the US and Canada I didn't fully understand who it was that required 8tracks to stop streaming abroad, but I wholeheartedly hate them so much. It was my preferred music service, I loved discovering all sorts of playlists and new music, while I've always disliked the Spotify client. To see it dissappear, probably due to greed from royalty owne…
> due to greed from royalty owners somewhere Expecting to be paid for your content is greed?
Locking your content out of a country because you don’t care enough to make a monetization deal there, sure.
Re: To everything there is a season – Why we're shutting down
#27“the company and its streaming service will wind down with the end of the decade, on December 31st, 2019” Years started being numbered at 1 so the decade ends on December 31 2020.
What? No. If Y2K was the beginning of a new millennium then Jan 1 2020 is the beginning of a new decade.
Re: To everything there is a season – Why we're shutting down
#28Wow, I'm surprised their advertising revenue was so little ($6k/month), considering how aggressive it got near the end. A large part of the reason I pivoted away from 8tracks was the aggressive advertising. Sad to see it was all for naught.
Was a great platform though, still one of the best ways to discover great music from human-created playlists.
Re: To everything there is a season – Why we're shutting down
#29I have never used 8tracks but the concept and testimonials make it sound like something I would have loved. I noticed in the blog post that all playlist authors can export their playlist metadata. Would it be useful to collect and store all the playlist metadata in a shared public place? I hate to see all the work that has gone into creating these playlists disappear (and selfishly I would love to see a new service emerge to make them accessible).
Re: To everything there is a season – Why we're shutting down
#30When Walmart shows up, small stores that sell the same goods go out of business.
Apple is the Walmart of tech.
I liked and used 8tracks but for me, it's strong point was that it was free. It's really hard to ask people for money when you're competing with free or 10$/mo for many many things.
You've got to really have an outstanding product - 8tracks was a good online playlist player. It is now gone.