Until today, we weren’t even aware of the fact that San Francisco startup Fuzz operated a social network / music discovery destination website besides its (awesome) spin-off Blip.fm, the “Twitter for music“. We only found out about that now that we’ve learned that the service, Fuzz.com, will apparently cease to exist shortly.
Here’s the notice, which can be found on their blog and was also e-mailed to its registered users:
Sadly, we are contacting you to announce that Fuzz.com is shutting down on February 13, 2009. Between now and then you may want to take the opportunity to post your forwarding information to fellow Fuzz users. It was with a heavy heart that we finally made the decision to turn off the lights, but because of increasing operating costs and flat revenues it simply no longer makes sense for us to keep Fuzz.com running. We offer our heartfelt thanks for being a part of it, and we’d like to give a special added thanks our avid, core users — true music fans who made Fuzz their home-base, and created a real sense of community.
Please note that once the site is shut down on February 13, 2009, the band and user accounts, and all other content on Fuzz.com, will no longer be accessible. For artists who have used the site to sell music, we plan to make a final payout within 60 days of the shut down.
Fuzz is pointing to its own Blip.fm, JamBase and Nimbit as alternatives.
Update: Arin Sarkissian, former lead engineer for Blip.fm, outlines the story in detail on his blog.
The company raised funding from angel investors in February 2008; we have an e-mail in with the company to learn how much and from whom, and also to confirm our logical assumption that the startup likely wants to dedicate its resources in developing the Blip.fm service.
(Hat tip to Tanya Breshears for the heads up)
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It is really sad news for Fuzz.com. If artists are looking for digital distribution make sure you head over and check out http://routenote.com
Sounds like a good idea to focus efforts during these economic times. And clearly there’s more buzz around Blip.fm than there was around Fuzz, so all the better to focus available talent on the most promising product.
Yeah, it seems a little odd that Blip.fm has two services that seem so similar, maybe Fuzz offers more social features or something. Got to say too this is probably a good call.
good one
Indeed!
Totally makes sense, In times of recession, you need to consolidate ,combine and focus. in a larger scheme of things , The move is healthy.
Praveen
http://spraveen...ro.blogspot.com
quite
http://www.zenbylunch.com
If Fuzz artists are looking for an alternative make sure you check out http://routenote.com
we used fuzz pretty much from the beginning and although it was ok, it was ‘just another’ social network. it never went viral and it pre-dated the general realization that music can’t really be sold over social networks in any traditional sense. the team behind it had great intentions so we give lots of congrats to them for realizing that they had to do something different and then starting Blip.fm
It sounded like a good idea that tried to take on too much. The spin off seems like a much better direction, but lots to be learned from the original idea.
Perhaps they can share more about this idea at http://www.startuprevival.com
I am off to blip.fm right now.
Its too bad, but its a great thing that blip.fm is still up and running. Awesome service. Check out http://www.musimuse.com for more thoughts on music business.
Fuzz looked great but lacked any real marketing efforts to attract much of a community outside of Oakland Noize hipsters. In retrospect, a widget/embeddable player of some kind which could be placed on a bands Myspace page and act as a beacon back to Fuzz would have been key.
There is a startup called cherrypeel.com I am a big fan of. Artists post there own material and users vote on what should hit the top of the charts. It would be a good spot for either the listeners or artists from fuzz to migrate to.
That being said, I am sad to fuzz go down.
I did an interview with Arin Sarkissian, at the time the lead developer behind both projects:
http://tv.smibs...show-episode-2/
Erin talks how the idea of blip.fm came about as a undercover and after hours project, how they were in the process of splitting fuzz and blip (summer 2008) how it was planned to evolve from there.
Erin works now at Digg but it was interesting to get the insight on that project early on. The whole story is an interesting case study on how startups can (and sometimes must) evolve radically to survive and achieve success.
Yup – Peter interviewed me some time after Blip launched & in his video I pretty much explain most of the happenings that led to Blip.
I wrote a blog entry last night that outlines the whole scenario w/ more detail: http://arin.me/...com-viva-blipfm
-Arin
Another great resource for musicians is Sutros.
Sutros is a place where musicians can share their music through the creative commons.
Listeners can download free music, listen to mp3s, and discover great new and local musicians.
http://sutros.com
Yeah–I love Sutros! I esp love that it is founded by Stanford grads. Wahoo! Awesome. I will have to check out the other digital download site mentioned to help promote my music.
I would be nice for artists to be able to pick a few (only) storefronts to sell through rather than having to spread thin marketing resources across so many social networking destinations…
I think that’s the primary reason Fuzz failed. Artists and their teams just don’t have time to have “another MySpace”…and now, of course…we have Facebook. YAY.
i heart facebook.
m