Hyped as the next big competiton to iTunes and Spotify, digital music service Beyond Oblivion has crashed and burned following a capital rasing excercise worth $87 million. What?
CEO of Beyond Oblivion, Adam Kidron has described himself as "a brand and lifestyle prognosticator". Obviously his powers of prognostation have escaped him on this occasion. The idea behind Beyond Oblivion was to offer a music download free of subscription fees but also free from advertising. The service was to be cloud-based allowing users to store and share music across multiple devices – MP3 players, mobile phones, and computers. It intended to pay a royalty to record labels each time their music was played. This would be funded by charging consumers a flat fee on the hardware – be it a mobile phone or computer. Nice idea but a great way to go insane administering. In his own words Kidron explains the business failure as difficulty in "coordinating the diversity of the ecosystem" which includes artists labels and manufactures.
Beyond Oblivion apparently struggled to persuade the hardware manufacturers to collect the money from shoppers when they purchased the devices that would be used to download the music.
The idea behind Beyond Oblivion is another fascinating example of how entrepreneurs are dealing with the new musical landscape and how it can be monetised. Not to be deterred, and this the great thing about entepeneural types, Kidron signed off his statement regarding the demise with "Until victory always." We haven't seen the last of him.
