
Kim Dotcom's new music streaming service - together_us
http://baboom.com/
======
jnardiello
Kim Dotcom is an evil genius and a remarkable marketing guy. During his whole
career no doubts he made a fortune out of other people work BUT, still, he
can't be considered responsible for it because - in fact - he had MILLIONS of
users who actually used the pirated content megaupload made available (and i
dare anyone here to throw the first stone if they never used megaupload). So,
while i'm not yet sure i like the guy, i still consider the megaupload affair
a huge mistake.

What is astonishing anyway is what he made out of the whole situation. No
doubt most of the people out there would have been simply destroyed by events.
Not only he wasn't, but he managed to launch two different businesses that
still surely has a lot to show in the future.

Regarding this specific music project, i can only say that i agree with him.
Paying for the music you like IS the new model , so far he looks like one of
the few who understood it (together with Spotify, which is in fact doing the
same).

PS: I really like the album he made available for free.

~~~
zwdr
Kimble is a fraud and an asshole. The only things he's good at are marketing
and scamming. Just take a look at his history- insider trading, selling
userdata from a BBS he ran to a lawyer, scamming the german telcos... the list
is quite long.

He's a good marketer, but one of the worst people I've read about. There's a
file of his quotes (from the CCC mailing list) circulating, if you know german
you should try reading that. Really gives some insight into him. For example
how that l33t hacker cred he has is all for show– I wouldn't buy anything
about free speech from him either. He's only interested in money. I remember
one quote from one of his teachers about how Kimble was the most antisocial
kid he ever teached LOL.

TLDR: You really shouldnt like the guy, read a bit about him and you'll figure
out why.

EDIT: Here's the quote file:
[http://babsi.de/KIMBLE.txt](http://babsi.de/KIMBLE.txt)

~~~
yapcguy
_> ... a fraud and an asshole. The only things he's good at are marketing and
scamming_

Are you talking about AirBnb and their Craigslist scamming?

 _> He's only interested in money._

Meanwhile venture backed start-ups are doing God's work, right?!

~~~
zwdr
>Are you talking about AirBnb and their Craigslist scamming?

What? I don't even know if Kimble and AirBnB are connected...

>Meanwhile venture backed start-ups are doing God's work, right?!

If you do a Ctrl+F "venture" I'm sure you wont find any occurences in my post.

~~~
curiousphil
I believe he's comparing the less than above board things dotcom has done to
the sidestepping of the law that AirBNB actively endorses. Basically saying
that HN is all about companies like AirBNB because they hatched here while
they aren't that much better when it comes to working within the law and
playing by the rules. I could be mistaken though, correct me if I'm wrong
yapcguy. Not saying I fully agree just trying to make sense of his post for
you!

~~~
yapcguy
You are 100% correct.

I should have used the /sarcasm tag so zwdr didn't take me so literally.

------
rangibaby
I have an iTunes library of a million bajillion tracks, a habit I picked up
back in the 00s when downloading an entire album (or every album!) of an
artist you liked was a novel thing and turned everyone into the digital
equivalent of hoarders.

And guess what? I pretty much listen to none of it anymore. My daily music
dose now comes from Soundcloud, where active artists are putting up new tracks
/ mixes and giving the equivalent of Facebook likes to tracks that they
personally enjoyed. It is a fun way of listening to music, and I often go and
buy tracks on iTunes even if they are already free to download (which is the
case a lot of the time).

This site has me really excited. The player is slick, the presentation is
cool. Kim Dotcom's album itself is competently generic club music, which is
more than can be said for a lot of club music.

Exciting!

~~~
gress
I'm curious - do you ever use genius to 'rediscover' music from your old
collection, or is it just plain better to have a broader range available?

I personally do a little of both - using either my own collection, or pandora
and now iTunes Radio. I find myself using iTunes Radio more and more vs my own
collection.

~~~
rangibaby
I actually do occasionally. Genius can make a pretty good mix from just some
random song from years ago. iTunes radio isn't available here, but one of my
buddies uses Grooveshark all the time.

------
staticelf
Wow, never thought it would be such hate on HN against kim.com?

I think he seems to really fight for internet freedom in more ways than the
angry commentators in this thread probably will ever do.

Who cares if he had a dark past. He's already been to jail for one crime in my
knowledge and I think he really deserves his money.

It seems you're gonna buy the songs you want to listen to directly from
artists with this new service. It can't be anything like pirating? He is
really pushing it forward and completes his products with the touch of
quality.

~~~
brazzy
The only thing he has ever fought for is his own bank account. He doesn't have
a "dark past", but an ongoing history of scamming. You can be assured that he
will find the optimal way to scam both you and the artists out of as much
money as possible.

~~~
staticelf
Please, enlighten me. Because I have no idea of what you're talking about.
Give me some proof.

All I've seen and heard is that the super fiasco on the megaupload case but
that's not a fiasco for him, the users or anyone else but the governments
involved.

For now, I am still a fan of Kim.com.

~~~
ScottWhigham
If I only ever read my news from sites like torrentfreak, I too would think
kim was an awesome, super guy. It's not hard to diversify your news sources...

~~~
staticelf
Who said that I even visit torrentfreak?

/facepalm

~~~
forgotmycreds
People don't have the same view of another person as me, lets make arguments.
He is doing good things for some people for sure, because he had lots of
support in his legal fight. This guy made money on peoples data? How much did
facebook earn of you?

------
forrestthewoods
Fuck Kim Dotcom. He's a scumbag piece of shit who deserves to rot in prison.
He plots and schemes way to put hundreds of millions of dollars into his
pocket off of the works of others. Anyone who supports him should be ashamed
of themselves.

~~~
JoshGlazebrook
> He plots and schemes way to put hundreds of millions of dollars into his
> pocket off of the works of others.

And the way the recording industry works is any different?

~~~
this_user
The recording industry at least doesn't run an underground BBS and sells out
its users to law enforcement to save itself after being raided. Kimble has
always been a self-centred scumbag. I really don't understand why anybody ever
trust him again with anything.

~~~
goldenkey
You can judge someone both on their merits and vices. Both Mega and this
Baboom are pretty awesome and technically amazing. I'm listening to his album
right now, and it's actually really catchy and enjoyable. The man has many
talents, and he is using them for good at the moment. I'd say the U.S.
government is way worse than someone who is 'self-centered.' The U.S. is a war
machine, Dotcom is conceited. Now who should we be concerned about, heh.

~~~
ryanSrich
> The man has many talents, and he is using them for good at the moment. I'd
> say the U.S. government is way worse than someone who is 'self-centered.'

That's akin to saying "well at least he's not killing innocent woman and
children".

~~~
goldenkey
I mentioned the US because the charges on him are from the US government,
lobbied by corporate interests.

Self-centered does not imply killing in any way, shape, or form. If you use
the word akin, try not to be hyperbolic, it makes any intelligent reader
immediately discard any validity you would have summoned.

~~~
ryanSrich
The point was that perhaps we should be setting our standards a bit higher
than the US government.

------
mrkmcknz
Say what you want about Kim Dotcom, the guy is a marketing genius.

Before Megaupload he was virtually unknown out of tech/finance circles. Now my
mother knows who he is. Albeit, she calls him Dotcom Internet.

~~~
jagermo
No, he was not. He was, among other things, known as a fellon in a pump and
dump scheme around letsbuyit.com.
[http://attrition.org/errata/charlatan/kimble/](http://attrition.org/errata/charlatan/kimble/)

~~~
eli
You're suggesting that he was very well known for that scheme? Not so sure
about that...

------
spindritf
You gotta admire the guy's drive. Relentless.

The player is also quite slick. No flash, and very responsive.

~~~
yapcguy
The video background on the homepage packs quite the punch, really draws you
in - for a minute I thought it might be some kind of WebGL.

------
icebraining
Apparently they're Portuguese! Congratulations, we sure need more startups
around here :)

~~~
pmcpinto
Yes we do.I also didn't know that they were portuguese

~~~
dysoco
They weren't, I think they had to "hide" there after all the Megaupload drama.

~~~
vldx
They have numerous remote working developers across Europe. Makes sense their
HQ to be there; also, in terms of taxes and etc as far as I know everything is
pretty tight.

------
nForce
I like the site. Can anyone give a technical synopsis of how this has been
made, perhaps the time frame and complexity of an app like this?

I'm assuming Kim hasn't coded this himself, anyone know if he outsourced to a
company?

~~~
pbhjpbhj
The Baboom developers page links to 2 open-source projects. One of the web
pages, for Mout
([https://github.com/mout/mout](https://github.com/mout/mout)), is © linking
to [http://www.millermedeiros.com/](http://www.millermedeiros.com/) so
presumably he's one of the devs.

Satazor is listed as a dev on Mout and also on the other OS project on the
Baboom site, Bower ([http://bower.io/](http://bower.io/)).

If you really want to know ...
[http://instagram.com/p/iGuGNvLpwK](http://instagram.com/p/iGuGNvLpwK) shows
pics none of which are Kimdotcom AFAICT.

------
xzel
I'm not sure if anyone actually listened to his album but the production on it
is pretty solid. I would love to know who made most of this. It sounds like
all the pop EDM garbage thats out there right now. A lot of the lyrical
content is totally in that realm of meaningless phrases about life and
partying. Songs like Keep Getting Better could have me fooled that it was a
Rihanna song (really both of the girls Amari and Ilati sounded autotuned like
her).

------
davej
The demo site works well and feels slick. It's a pity I had to listen to his
music to try it out though.

Auto-tune is a cool technology but I liked it better when tone-deaf rich
people couldn't flatly sing a poorly-written, over-produced song and call it
music.

------
doubt_me
Did he really just make an entire service just to not have a myspace page?

------
Geee
It's also the release of Kim Dotcom's debut album 'Good Times', and also his
40th birthday! :)

------
deletes
I assume he made a deal with the artists and we are not downloading illegally?

Nice design, btw the animation is maxing out my gpu.

~~~
dangrossman
There's nothing on the site to download other than his own album in the
preview. His video implies he wants artists to upload their music for free,
and fans only pay if they enjoy the work. The download tab for an album in the
preview has links to iTunes, Amazon and Bandcamp.

------
antoinec
I might have missed something (if so please tell me), but the only mention of
Kim Dotcom is "Check the first album ever released on Baboom, Good Times by
Kim Dotcom", and it's saying what it's saying... and not that Kim Dotcom is
actually behind the service.

~~~
citricsquid

        We are associated with the same group behind MEGA 
        (Megaupload successor as Wikipedia states), and 
        responsible for the upcoming music service BABOOM.
    

From their recruitment document

~~~
dangrossman
Some more background: [http://torrentfreak.com/kim-dotcom-teases-new-music-
service-...](http://torrentfreak.com/kim-dotcom-teases-new-music-service-
baboom-130907/)

~~~
antoinec
Thanks

------
lowglow
It's like a new myspace.

------
RDeckard
Kim Dotcom is a maverick.

------
toblender
Wow, Kim's album is actually pretty catchy...

------
mpg33
I used Rdio for a few months this it seems like this streaming music business
model is the going to be the future..

------
primitivesuave
Personality-wise, he's kind of like the alter-ego of Steve Wozniak.

~~~
elwell
ha interesting...

------
elwell
The site, including the careers page, is beautiful.

------
ing33k
he can also sing ? wow

~~~
jagermo
just like Silvio Berlusconi. And probably one of the Kim-Clan in northern
Korea.

