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)