Earbits will be shutting down June 16th

Sorry to hear the news. I interviewed with Earbits at one point and they seemed like really good guys. If I may offer some gentle post-mortem constructive criticism:<p>Earbits seemed very focused on their value proposition to musicians. Their goal seemed to be &quot;the Google AdWords of Music&quot;, but here&#x27;s the thing: if you want to become the Google AdWords of music, you first have to become the Google of Music. The value proposition to the listeners is key.<p>To their credit, Earbits did have a value proposition for listeners: music discovery. But this meant their competition was Pandora, music blogs, Pitchfork.com, word of mouth, and all the other ways we find music in the 21st century. Another commenter here says &quot;music is a tough nut to crack,&quot; but the real issue here is that music <i>discovery</i> is a tough nut to crack.<p>You could counter that Earbits differentiated itself by focusing on independent, unsigned artists; that&#x27;s a noble mission, but if you&#x27;re going to commit to that as your value proposition, you have to ask yourself if there&#x27;s a market for it. Is finding unsigned artists really a pain point for most music listeners? I&#x27;m not convinced.<p>Anyway, sorry it didn&#x27;t work out. Wish you guys the best of luck in your future endeavors.

Music is a tough nut to crack. The industry players feel burned by every technological innovation, from the CD to Napster. The status quo rejects technology because it undermines business models and threatens to put new people in charge.<p>It helps to be Dr. Dre when starting up and trying to break into such a mess. Or you can sell a big chunk to the labels (Spotify) so they can feel comfortable that the latest disruption won&#x27;t be the end of selling musical bytes.

I listen to jazz on Earbits for a bit 4-5 times per week. Really enjoyed it, but it seemed there were limits to what I could discover but was fine cycling through a lot of the same stuff.<p>None of the social features or other genres really enticed me so I was doubtful the model would scale. For example, I listen to a lot of electronic music and there&#x27;s no reason why I would go to Earbits over SoundCloud, YouTube, TheFuture.fm, or other sites. Unfortunately since it was so listener-centric without enticing social or discovery features, I didn&#x27;t see how it could be a differentiator (other than some quality music from artists you&#x27;ve never heard of).<p>I&#x27;m sad to see it go though. Same with ex.fm.

As the former builder of a music start-up that failed I am really sorry to see them go. If you are going to go down this route make sure that you watch <a href="http://www.justin.tv/startupschool/b/272178844" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.justin.tv&#x2F;startupschool&#x2F;b&#x2F;272178844</a> Dalton Caldwell&#x27;s excellent speech on the subject.

I&#x27;m sad to see earbits go. It was a great idea and a great service. Joey, we traded a few technical emails around when you started, and I wish you, Yottam and the others the best in your next endeavor. Also, thanks for regularly being the &quot;voice of reason&quot; on HN in regards to questions about the music industry.<p>I&#x27;m still curious about one thing; two-sided market? Are you using this phrase as the simple way to say it, or do you really think it&#x27;s a two sided market. I&#x27;ve always seen it as a multi-sided market.<p>When I think about all the specialized skills (and equipment) that goes into music, both recorded and live performances, it always seems to have a mind boggling number of sides. Worse yet, the various sides tend to be in competition (labels versus artists, consumers versus distributors, sound and instrument equipment manufacturers versus ...). Though some truces and alliances exist, each of the many sides is vying against the others to get paid.<p>I recall reading one of your very early blog posts where you mentioned the vast amount of effort you put into advertising and marketing your own band, and this gave you the idea for earbits. Essentially, the marketing and advertising you did for your own band was in competition with the similar efforts of labels&#x2F;promoters for other bands.<p>Am I wrong in thinking of music as a highly complex, intertwined, multi-sided market?

Rough stuff. Best to Joey and the team.<p>I have a very short conversation in my email archives in which I sent an unsolicited feature request.<p>They were perfectly kind, and eventually implemented it.<p>That was my experience with earbits.

Sad to see earbits go :(<p>Really liked the service and even found a few artist I happened to like very much.<p>If Joey is reading, I was waiting for the day I could buy Groovies. We shared a few emails regarding some things about the site but I never wrote to you about this.<p>Wish you guys all the best in your future endeavors.

&quot;our concept does work...but...we simply needed a lot more capital&quot;<p>This sounds like the old dot-com boom excuses of the early 00&#x27;s. Popular service or not, if after almost 5 years you&#x27;re still relying heavily on recurring investor capital for day-to-day operations and not bringing in sufficient revenue to at least cover basic expenses, unless it&#x27;s high-tech biomed or pharma, it typically isn&#x27;t a viable business model for a startup. Maybe this would have worked out for them 10 or so years ago, but not so much any more.

After this <i>sad</i> announcement, I&#x27;ve revisited Earbits. I love the listening experience as I did before.<p>Sure some technical details where a show stopper for me, i.e. no email account, gamification&#x2F;social currency had no effect on me and the lack of a proper mobile app.<p>But I overcame those obstacles: I’ve created a Facebook account for Earbits and I was automatically recording the playlists during the day so I could listen to them during my commute.<p>I think that the loneliness was far more important. I never met or connected with other users that were listening Earbits too (I’m in London, UK). Maybe the traditional listening radio experience was missing; with a DJ, a voice, a brand (Earbits) we can stick on. It’s one thing asking people to connect with an artist, but clearly it’s another to create an Earbits community.<p>That said I’ve discovered :<p>- extraordinary artists<p>It’s one thing to help listeners to discover new artists, it’s another to help them to discover <i>good</i> new artists! To me that’s the curation miracle :-)<p>- extraordinary founders<p>I’ve been inspired by your journey like no other. I really wish you the best for the aftermath of 16 June. :-)<p>Thanks again for all the work you’ve done.

One thing that was special about Earbits was the quality control. My band submitted our music to Earbits and was rejected, but I have aspired since then to record something objectively good enough they would have to accept it :) I&#x27;m sad that that chance will never come now. What other music sites do quality control with humans screening the music? Does Pandora count? Magnatune also comes to mind, but they&#x27;re a label, however unconventional.

I remember contacting Joey in the early days via Quora. And although I was also doing a music statup, he was nothing but really helpful. Sorry it did not turn out too good.<p>I still believe that music can be cracked i.e made profitable, in other non US markets (like Africa - South Africa) where almost 100% of the artistes are indie and you do not need to deal with strong and evil supplier power.<p>Best of luck homie and I look forward to seeing what you are up to next.

I really liked the concept, but I could never get past the &quot;you must use Facebook to sign in&quot; part. Listening without signing in was easy enough, but there were several artists&#x2F;songs I would&#x27;ve liked to have saved for later, but was turned off when I found that an account required Facebook.<p>Best of luck in your future endeavors, guys!

Earbits was always an interesting company. The central idea seemed to be &quot;pay to promote&quot;, which initially sounded like a crazy idea to me. In hindsight, it was a good idea, as virool, another YC startup, is doing very well with that model for videos (including a huge number of music videos).

Anyone knows what&#x27;s going on at thesixtyone? The site seems to be up and running (including pre-redesign version at old.thesixtyone.com), but I wonder how healthy is their ecosystem.<p>I wonder if there&#x27;re any other similar projects that are still active.

I guess online music industry getting too crowded. Yesterday, Amazon announced music streaming service as part of Amazon Prime bundle.<p>I liked earbits though especially the people. Now a days, Rdio is my go to place for music. I like UI and the whole experience.

Really sorry to see the flag go down. Joey, Ben, and Yottam are great guys. I&#x27;ve got nothing but respect for how long they kept fighting to make it happen. Music is a tough space and they were brave to enter that arena.

I just found this site, and it seems great!<p>Feels shameless to ask, but I wish I could get a list of all songs in each genre from the Electronic section.<p>Feel free to send me a mail at zolomon@gmail.com in case it would be possible.<p>I am in dire need of new music to listen to!

I&#x27;d never heard of it, looks like it wasn&#x27;t too bad!

How many tracks are there and is there a chance to release them to the public for free before shutting down? Would be sad to see indie music get lost in the storm. :(

I still remember the awesome pop-up chatroom that happened when you implemented what would become firebase.

Congrats on having tried. I&#x27;m sure you learned a lot that will help you succeed later. Good luck!

What kind of usage is Earbits getting? No buyers (or takeover-ers)?

OMG! ... who?

Sad news. I liked the site, and discovered some good artists there.<p>They should be proud of what they accomplished. I&#x27;ll bet they did a lot of good for indy music.