Amsterdam-based online concert destination site Fabchannel is calling it quits after 9 years of digital goodness, blaming the poor state of the economy as a whole and the crisis in the online music and advertising industries in particular.
This is the official press release:
FABCHANNEL STOPS ITS ACTIVITIES
Online concert channel Fabchannel.com ceases its activities as of today, due to bad economic prospects within the music and online advertising market.
During the last nine years, Fabchannel have been successfully promoting concert recordings of national and international artists online among a large international audience.
The Fabchannel business model bases itself on two essential ingredients: international streaming rights and international advertising/sponsoring revenue. After a substantial investment in 2007, Fabchannel has been focusing fully on increasing its reach among the international audience and the development and implementation of online advertising formats and partnerships.
After an energetic start in 2008 with the introduction of video commercials on Fabchannel.com, media partnerships with renowned news sites like nu.nl and Spiegel.de as well as signing a worldwide partnership with Universal Music Group, in the last few months it has been getting ever more difficult to reach the set targets. The audience has not increased as planned, mostly due to the majority of major record labels giving no consent to record their artists. At the same time, the online advertising and sponsoring market has been put under big pressure due to decreasing budgets of advertisers and sponsors.
The management and shareholders of Fabchannel expect that this situation is not going to change during the next years. Therefore, they have jointly taken the decision to stop all activities in order to avoid getting into financial problems and, for example, lose the possibility to use the archive they have been building in the future.
Fabchannel’s concert archive will go offline on Friday 13 March. During the upcoming months, Fabchannel will strive to make suitable arrangements with employees, customers and suppliers.
We’re very sad they won’t be around anymore soon and that we have to put this one in the deadpool, but that’s just the way it goes.
(Thank to Robbert van Geldrop for the tip)
great service. sad news. this is probably a sign that in streaming media business, paying for extra downloads is not a valid business model. they will hopefully leave the archive running. then they could announce the calendar of upcoming events with a ‘bounty ticker’, a donate function which sets the recording team in motion until a certain ammount of budget is reached. people ‘betting’ early on might get money back?
Yes, I think it is ultimately the business model that is flawed.
I may be wrong, but it seems to me that except for Apple iTunes, there really is very little money to be made in online music … and yet people still try to create new services.
Maybe it is time for people to simply face the fact that online music is just not a great business to be in?
From India
Anjali Sen
Hello smart babes are sexy blog, I don’t care what anyone saids, you making very intelligent and engaging statements. I love readying your comments, keep it up!
I agree with Alexander that SBASB often writes comments that are thought through and often provides a great perspective on the subject..
But.. please stop with that replying on the first comment to appear on top… it’s called spam.
If you’re that good, we will read ya.
@Melvin
“it’s called spam.” Of course, you are correct! But it seems that you are late on the news: “Smart Babes Anjali Sen From India” is well known by now as a shameless spammer, posting confused, off-the-wall comments on most every article on TC. Her purpose is to attract viewer to her lame blog… [desperate marketing, you know?]
BTW, what are you wearing? Can I see your nipples?
Sweet….
its the music industry’s business model that is flawed. It is their unwillingness to adapt to world of changing technology that is causing the problem. They are clinging to a model that can no longer make the money they need, and they are blaming everyone else. I would really love to see some progressive moves towards a more sustainable system, torrents will not just go away. I thought fabchannel was a gift from Rama, and im sad to see it close.
I think it would have been very difficult to make profit with such a large team in the long run anyway. If not impossible.
I really don’t get why internet companies are not just outsourcing more of their work…
There’s A LOT of money to be made in online music actually. Fabchannel’s decision is a big surprise to me since I’m a music futurist and what they’re reporting goes against numbers and statistics I’m seeing right now.
Pity.
whatever the model, fabchannel was fantastic, unlike the multitude of sleepy and copycat sites out there. it’s a shame to see them go.
damn it.
FabChannel. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve recommended it. Sad to see it go.
Yes it is sad, but I think we will be seeing a lot more of these in the weeks ahead. Unfortunately relying on venture funding for your “revenues” is not a viable business model. The battle is not just for eyeballs and attention, but perhaps most importantly for monetisation.
Take Google.
Google did NOT become a great business because they were better than anyone else at organising the world’s information.
Google became a great business because they were better than everyone else at MONETISING the world’s information.
Of course it helped that their search technologies WERE better than others, but that was not what made it a great business.
Similarly with companies like FabChannel, the game is not about just giving users a great experience … it is actually making money while doing so. And that, unfortunately, is much much harder.
From India
Anjali Sen
“…. Google became… better than everyone else at MONETISING the world’s information.”
Never read such an uninformed and silly statement. Why do you write this type of nonsense?
Google started to make money when it turned itself into an advertising company. Did not make money from searches. news. etc.
Do research before posting comments, for your own credibility.
Maybe they can make money if the content is free and they focus on having the best search utilities & deliver third-party ads. Music sites need better cross-site searches.
Clark Schultz
St. Louis, Missouri
I think one thing that is coming from all this is that relying on ad revenue is not now nor will it ever be a good business model
A damn shame. One of the best online music services. Sad news indeed.
“The management and shareholders of Fabchannel expect that this situation is not going to change during the next years.”
They’re smart.
Fabchannel live streamed the streets of Amsterdam for the P2P-Next live bittorent trial, for the swarmplayer.
Sad, maybe they will reamerge with the tribbler team.
God bless for you
I am so sad to hear that Fabchannel is shutting down! I have been a HUGE fan of the site and thought that they had great concerts that were really well produced, and I loved to watch them live. It is also so sad that the archives will be shut down. I wish the Fabchannel employees the best in their future endeavors!
Does anybody know how to download the concert Files? I’ve had luck grabbing flv files from Youtube and pitchfork.tv and such with Safari’s Activity window. Fabchannel doesn’t want to give it up that easily.
There is a Fiery Furnaces show that I’ve watched a good 25 times. My bandwidth usage is probably what killed the entire site.
What was the other bad news for online music fans? I think it’s pretty good to be a online music fan these days.
The lawsuits we’ve been covering, they’re pretty bad for the startups that are getting sued. But I agree there’s a lot of choice these days for online music fans.
Join the facebook group created to gather people and ideas to save Fabchannel.
http://www.face...uid=55050553996 #/group.php?gid=55050553996
That’s too bad. However, your headline blames it on the economy? I doubt it. I’d chalk it up to the music biz / industry.
I have a confession to make: I had never heard of Fabchannel until now. Could this be just a part of the problem? How was it advertised?
sad to hear that…
http://www.heal...tedirectory.com
video is still way more expensive than audio, so may be audio only is the way to go for now. Any suggestions of good sites for that?
NOOOOOOO
Don’t like the outcome of this one bit….
We need to support initiatives like these because by them pioneering. We can look for the right solutions to the industries growing amount of problems.