Ambitious digital music provider Beyond Oblivion has collapsed before launching it’s first product, as reported by NME. The New York company reportedly spent $87 million (£56 million) of investors money, including News Corps and the Wellcome Foundation since beginning in 2008, however their first product Boinc never made it into the market.
Boinc was a unique venture that hoped to rival other digital music services such as iTunes and Spotify by being built into devices such as PCs and smartphones. Users would pay a one time life-of-device fee and micro-royalties in the form of per-play payments would have been payable whether the music was legally downloaded or not.
Adam Kidron, the company’s chief executive, announced in a statement on Friday that the company was shutting down, saying:
“Beyond was always a tremendously grand ambition as the advances required by the record labels and music publishers were substantial, reflecting the breadth of the rights required to create a true digital music one-stop. In order to fund the advances and to build our service, we raised a number of rounds of capital and negotiated commercial agreements that contained substantial guarantees and advances with device manufacturers and network operators, who like us, understand that truly unlimited music is insanely valuable to consumers.”
Boinc was unique but far from an original concept. Many other digital ventures have met with mixed successes, including Nokia’s scrapped Come With Music plan-which gave cellphone buyers access to unlimited music and was removed from most markets, as well as Muve Music, a similar Cricket Communications service that has grown to 270,000 users as of October 31, as reported by the New York Times.
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