

Earbits (YC W11) Brings A Twist: Online Radio Where Bands Can Pay For Playtime - pitdesi
http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/09/yc-funded-earbits-brings-a-twist-to-music-startups-online-radio-where-bands-can-pay-for-playtime/

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9999
How is that an advantage for listeners? Payola was made illegal for a good
reason. Pay to play live venues are treated with derision by music fans. I
really don't see why any music fan would choose this over a model where music
is chosen based on merit alone.

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earbitscom
Hey 9999...I understand your skepticism. The advantage for listeners is no
commercials or fees, and flexibility and features that are prohibited when you
rely on statutory licenses. We haven't seen that current outlets rely on merit
alone, and we're tired of seeing bands waste money on fliers just hoping
someone goes home and listens to them online. I think you'll see that the
artists on our platform are incredibly talented and high quality, and when you
get your first free album by hitting one of our site's triggers, you'll see
how working direct with artists benefits listeners.

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mikeryan
Ironically one of the few services I happily pay for is Pandora in order to
listen ad free. I don't really find the earbits model any better.

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sev
_Users, he explains, will be exposed to high quality music they haven’t heard
yet, and bands obviously get the exposure they’re fighting so hard to find._

But the richest bands don't guarantee high quality music. In fact, as
mainstream music suggests, often it's the contrary. Similar situation with low
budget vs. high budget movies.

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earbitscom
Hey Sev,

Our algorithm, much like Adwords, will be a combination of ratings, relevancy
to a particular user, and only after those things help determine a fit would
their bid affect anything. Also, a band who spends more may be introduced to
more people, but will not necessarily saturate the experience for a single
user, as is the case in regular radio. Also, we don't sell pipe dreams to
artists with low quality material. Everybody has to be approved, and I think
you'll find that even if you don't love everything you hear on Earbits, it is
all high quality, professional-grade music.

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sev
That sounds good. It's just that it's easy to get carried away with an
algorithm you own which produces money by "selling out" and doing what your
highest bidders want you to do in this kind of business. As long as it's
monitored and done in such a way to make money and be appealing to non-
mainstream as well as mainstream styles, this will be very useful.

~~~
earbitscom
Yeah...we're forcing ourselves to focus on quality by not charging the band
until someone has listened to 30 seconds. If we get a lot of skips, we lose
money, so we're forced to focus on the right matches and high quality music.
We want to do this right.

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bretthopper
Is there any permissions/information you guys don't request on Facebook
Connect? The long list scared me off.

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thegooley
I understand the hesitation, we try to avoid asking for anything that we don't
need to make the user experience better. We don't post anything without you
explicitly performing a "share to facebook" action, so you can rest easy on
that front. And we ask for your profile info so that we can see what bands you
already like.

~~~
bretthopper
That's good to know. I still wish Facebook offered a feature where you could
explain why you need a permission, or better yet, let you pick which ones you
agree to instead of all or nothing.

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mikeryan
As an old guitar player I really have a gut aversion to this whole idea.

I find trying to wring cash out of, what are likely, struggling indie artists
sucks.

As a consumer I _do not want_ crappy music by the bands that paid the most in
my stream.

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earbitscom
Hey Mike, I hear you...my partner and I spent thousands of dollars trying
"traditional" music marketing tactics - fliers, ads in the LA Weekly, and all
of the normal social media that bands use now. What I am sure you know is that
nothing sells an artist more than hearing their music and deciding for
yourself if you like it. If a good artists gets into rotation enough on radio,
they will build a fan base. We can play a band to a targeted user for $0.01
and that's plenty for what we need to operate. That's 1/15th the cost of a
flier. We're so committed to treating artists right that, if that user skips
you in the first 30 seconds, you're not charged.

And in terms of the quality, we also don't sell pipe dreams to bands who will
not benefit. We focus just as much on listeners as bands. Fire up a channel.
You may not like everything you hear, but there is no "crappy music" on
Earbits.

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guywithabike
Isn't this exactly what we already have with Clear Channel?

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zecho
Nah. Clear Channel has a very complex legal system to maneuver so they don't
look like they're accepting Payola. Earbits simplifies the payola scheme quite
a bit.

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earbitscom
Agreed. With personalized streams for every listener, bands with a $10 budget
can have the same (albeit scaled down) opportunity as someone with $1000. With
terrestrial markets there's no way to start small. Additionally, anyone with a
split focus on advertisers and an attempt at this model are not going to
compete with someone who has 100% focus on treating artists like clients.

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JairusKhan
You realize that's not a compliment, right? Payola was terrible for music and
terrible for musicians. On behalf of myself and all the other musicians I
promote: You're hurting music.

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teyc
It is not true. Distribution and promotion is broken at the moment. By helping
find the right audience and right sound $10 at a time, you don't have to be
50cent to evolve your music in the street.

If you are promoting music, is there any reason why you wouldn't use earbits
to test new audiences?

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JairusKhan
Because pay-for-play is the very worst of the music industry and I won't
support it in any form.

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teyc
On one hand, pay-for-play is repulsive because it allows deep pocketed
promoters to promote bands ahead of others. Is this why it is repugnant?

Playing the devil's advocate here:

From a business sense, pay-for-play is like advertising, isn't it? It is a way
of building an audience.

In the end, there are audiences that radio stations have built up, and pay-
for-play may be cheaper than plastering the streets with posters, or paying
promoters, or touring, which is just as expensive.

One equivalent in the search engine world is SEO vs PPC listings. Each has its
cost. If you didn't know the people looking for a particular genre of music,
but somebody did, and they did it as a business - i.e. quit their jobs, put in
risk capital, why wouldn't you pay them for the information?

~~~
earbitscom
Thanks. As someone who managed $48M in performance marketing, I was destroyed
to see what musicians go through when I started promoting my album. I used to
drop $2 CD's off at head shops because I thought stoners would like our music.
People can complain about this all they want, but we believe this will be the
PPC of music, and if I can play someone's music to 200 people for the same $2
that we spent giving it to one person, I will sleep very well at night.

~~~
teyc
Congratulations. It is an unintuitive solution to a persistent problem. Is it
serendipity that you were doing PPC and making music at the same time? Most
broke artists wouldn't have thought about spending money this way to get
exposure, but this can really solve a very fundamental problem.

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grncdr
Only _one_ category for singer-songwriter? and only three (two of which are
quite similar) for electronic? How does the genre-list expand? How big (and
who!) is your editorial staff? Also, are online sales through Amazon only?

I'm not complaining as a listener, because my listening needs are already very
well met. But as a musician and somebody who would really like to recommend
Earbits to other musicians, this information is very important to me.

~~~
earbitscom
Hey grncdr! As you can imagine, when you are building a catalog from scratch
and working with every label and artist directly, you can't just fast forward
to a massive selection. We wish we could! Almost every artist has been
directly recruited, and every album is classified by our team. You can read
all about them on <http://www.earbits.com/play/#/about_us>

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colinplamondon
This has THE best sharing flow of any site I have ever seen. If you actually
like making money _check their site out_. I'm absolutely rolling it out across
our products in the next whack of updates.

Bar at the bottom showing friends' faces, filter to find someone in
particular, requiring like to share, posting to wall instead of Newsfeed-
perfection.

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earbitscom
Thanks! Note: You are liking the band when you do that, not us. Bands are
going to LOVE us. ;)

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twakefield
Congrats guys. I have been very impressed with the quality of the music. Going
in I figured the music was going to be crap but you do a great job of
filtering. Goes to show how much good music is out there that doesn't get
played through the typical channels.

~~~
earbitscom
Thanks! You will definitely hear music you know, though. I think you'll be
surprised who is trusting us to deliver them value.

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bmelton
I don't know that I honestly would have given much weight to this idea if I'd
heard it pitched to me, but as they've already got 1300 artists across 90
labels, I'd say it's obvious that I'd have been in the wrong.

I don't know if they'll ever get the bigger labels, and for my money, I hope
they don't. I mean, I'd love to see that nut get cracked, because honestly,
something like this COULD (I don't think it will) be the end of the RIAA. But
if that happens, then I'll be just as sad as I was when eMusic turned coat and
started bringing in bigger fish.

~~~
pitdesi
They've got 1300 artists... but so far no one is paying. So that part of the
model remains to be seen.

If they can build a huge audience, I'm sure some artists will pay... will
certainly be interesting to see how it all plays out (and if any major bands
get discovered through Earbits)!

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bermanoid
I'm just kind of unclear as to how they'll build a huge audience, given that
any pay-for-play scheme, as a rule, is not going to be playing the music that
I most want to hear.

I guess I'm wondering, where's the filter? What will make the music that I
hear at this site better, on average, than the music at any other site?

Because it sure as hell isn't the fact that artists will be able to pay for
exposure. IMO there's just no way around it, pay-for-play is a listener-
hostile dynamic, there's absolutely no way it could improve the quality of
what I listen to.

Actually, maybe that's a lie, there's one tiny way it can help: if pay-for-
play is limited only to the acts that have not had enough exposure for the
"market" to figure out whether they're any good, then it can improve what I
hear by letting the artists pay to make sure that they've actually been
listened to by enough people to be fairly judged. The real problem with payola
schemes is when artists that have already had plenty of exposure can use money
to make sure that they have more exposure than even the organically successful
acts - this is something that Earbits needs to make sure it avoids, and if it
is successful, this will mean some tough decisions, because they'll have to
start turning down money that their biggest customers want to give them
("What's that, Mr. Combs? You want to buy up 90% of our play time for the next
two months and fill it with your label's shitty music, and you'll pay us six
times what we made last year? No thanks, that would be _unfair_.").

In any case, I think more needs to be done to figure out a compelling pitch to
users. The payola side of it is not the right thing to emphasize - it's going
to offend musicians, and it's not going to attract users.

~~~
earbitscom
Hey Bermanoid... We understand all of these dynamics and we know that we have
to prove we're not going to go down that route. What you're describing would
be very short-sighted of us. Look at it this way, what we're proposing is very
much like Google Adwords. You wouldn't put an irrelevant product next to a
keyword for the money because nobody will click on it. To enforce the right
incentives on us, we're making 30 seconds the "click" for our artists. If
someone skips your music within the first 30 seconds, you don't pay, and we
lose money. Further, if we do what you're describing, we kill our audience.
We're in this for the long haul. We understand there will be skepticism. We
look forward to proving ourselves and I think if you check out our
credentials, you'll see that this isn't our first rodeo.

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lancefisher
Wow, I would invest in this. It is an excellent idea, and it will further
disrupt the existing music industry for the better.

~~~
9999
One of the few good things about the existing music business is that you
technically can't just buy your way onto the airwaves.

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waterlesscloud
Am I just blind or is there no volume control?

~~~
earbitscom
What kind of computer do you have? It's either on the front or the side.

But seriously, I told the team we needed one and they were like, we have more
important things to worry about. Haha! We're on it asap! Thanks for the ammo!

~~~
waterlesscloud
Ha! Thanks. Always prefer to do it in software if I can. I guess my computer
has a hardware control, somewhere, but I never use it.

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albahk
I am on a 1024x768 laptop and apart from the horizontal scrollbar being a
little annoying, I can only see "Ch" something link in the top-right of the
screen.

Its your choice as to what screen sizes you support, but it seems possible to
accommodate dinosaurs like me with little extra effort.

Nice site otherwise, listening now.

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boucher
The design is headed in a good direction but there are definitely quite a few
little things like this that could be improved. The top bar can still be fixed
position at the top without requiring an enormous minimum width. Similarly,
the idea of showing only the portion of the image that will fit on the visible
page is good, but the calculations are a bit off I think so it ends up looking
a bit like a mistake.

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lancefisher
I just sent my friends in Stellarondo over there. If you're into great indie
folk music you should check them out: <http://stellarondo.bandcamp.com/>

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bmelton
Your friends in Stellarondo remind me of Albert Castiglia, and I can't think
of many things more complimentary than that.

Thanks for the link.

Edit: Still, thanks for the link, but I'd apparently had another tab behind
that one that I was actually listening to when I turned my sound on.

They sound absolutely nothing like Albert Castiglia, however, I'm still really
enjoying it, just in a completely different way.

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DonnyV
I'v been in many original bands and I can tell you as a fellow musician and
band leader that this will not work. If your business model is based on the
bands paying you...good luck. We're broke from day 1!

~~~
earbitscom
I hear where you're coming from but bands spend money on fliers that cost
$0.15 a piece, just hoping you'll go home and listen to their music online. We
know, because we have done all of that stuff for our own band.

For $0.15, we can play you for 15 people who love your genre of music and put
links to your show's box office right there on the homepage. That means for
$15, we can play you for 1,500. You won't find better value anywhere, and if
you can't sell one $15 concert ticket with the links to the box office right
there, God help us all!

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DonnyV
I see what your trying to do but I just don't think it will work. Your tapping
the wrong stone. There's always going to be more fans then bands. You should
be finding a way to bring new music to your fans and bringing new fans to your
bands. Figure that out and you will have something no one else has. That has
value.

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prawn
No title tag at <http://earbits.com/> ?

Looks great though and I listened to a fair few songs. Quality is pretty
decent for a random music feed.

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zaveri
Seems like you all have quite a few employees! I was under the assumption that
YC accepted groups of 2 - 4 founders...

~~~
earbitscom
It's easy to build an awesome team when you have a vision people can get
behind. Look at our advisors...they are some serious heavy hitters. ;)

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zaveri
Congrats! Wish there was an alternate to FB connect to save songs...

~~~
earbitscom
There will be soon. Thanks for the feedback.

