SoundPedia, a Pandora-like music startup that launched back in 2006, just got a brand new UI that puts its dated interface to shame. It’s too bad it may never see the light of day.
The site, which we once described as A Decent Pandora Substitute For International Listers (Pandora is US-only), has turned into a prime example of what can go wrong when founders lose interest, ownership changes hands, and thousands of miles separate designers from developers.
In early 2008, SoundPedia’s founders decided to take a lesser role in the company and sold a 40% stake to the Amaru Group, a marketing boutique that was looking to capitalize on the site’s steady traffic (130k monthly uniques and 1 million monthly page views with an average 17 minute engagement time) as well as the targeted demographic that the site had naturally attracted. In particular, Amaru’s Jesus Diaz Jr. says that his company was looking to redesign the site to make it more appealing to hispanics in the 18-24 year old urban audience which constituted most of the site’s traffic.
So the Amaru Group set to work, and crafted the new design which you can see in the screenshots below (you can even visit a partially-functional beta of the the site here). But when it came down to actually implementing the design onto the SoundPedia homepage, Diaz says that there was a disconnect between his group and the site’s co-founder and lead developer, who is located in Singapore and is mainly concentrating on other projects.
Now it sounds like Diaz’s company has run out of patience, and along with the site’s other major shareholders will be putting SoundPedia up on the auction block, with plans to post it on Sedo on February 1st. Diaz says that because the site is turning a profit (though it sounds relatively modest) his group will keep it operational until it can find a buyer. It may be able to retain its audience for a while, but with no new features it will likely stagnate and die against the increasing competition. We’re putting SoundPedia on DeadPool watch for now.
I am sad for every venture that vanishes one way or the other. What I don’t get though is all these music and media sites that build their business / service quick sand in terms of the legal foundation. I mean the times of Napster have long gone where you could shake the music industry into a temporary scare to act until you’ve sold your service and someone else has to deal with the consequences . The RIAA is now taking those guys on quicker than they can build their website – or do I miss something?
@peterurban
This is legally licensed music (it’s too small to fall under the higher per-stream fees)
Sites always turn a “profit” when key founders/developers don’t take pay… which from the way it sounds… the developer in Singapore probably wasn’t paid
The new design look smashing compared to the old one. Too bad they’re going to the deadpool.
Actually I was one of the original founders along with Nendoke. I left my active role in the company in December 2007 after we had gained our first round of investment and didn’t agree on the direction they wanted to take it and had a great opportunity offered to me.
Speaking for Nendoke who stuck with them until mid 2008, I know he has since moved on to a new company as well.
We both have a love for it still but just have our hands tied, not sure what is going on with the current management or their plans.
Anyhow good luck to anyone who takes it on, I know if I were to run it again I would be pushing its functionality forward.
The new design is a substantial upgrade, but unfortunately agree with everything Jason mentioned above.
They peaked over a year ago (~October ‘07), and I don’t see them coming back.
I believe their fall can be attributed to two primary factors:
1) They never really found their niche. They didn’t specialize in any one thing. They tried to do a little of a lot as opposed to the other way around.
2) It’s hard to operate a company that focuses on American music out of Singapore..
Last year, I sold a web project myself via Sedo.com, and they actually did a great job and got me a pretty decent price for it….
I just discovered this site thru this article and I am enjoying it. I enjoy Gospel music and so far they haven’t disappointed.