It will need to create niches that fans of a particular genre will love instead of hoarding mainstream music. Robert Barbiere, Senior Vice President, Digital Rights, at digital rights management company Pex, said 8tracks will have to be smart about licensing. The company is also talking with rights holders to get global rights and drum up its catalog, so users can search through it to make playlists. Treichel said that because the 8tracks community consists of music aficionados, the company is also looking to explore a layer where users can stream tracks at a lossless compression level à la TIDAL.
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Then it’ll focus on relaunching its Android app along with exploring to restart 8tracks in other markets such as the UK, Germany, India, and South America. The company’s short term goal is to get some rights and launch the service in Canada. In the US, users can stream tracks through 8track’s own player and access tracks that are uploaded by users. The company has been using the YouTube API to stream tracks to users globally. He said that the service currently has 1 million active users. Treichel bought the assets, folded it under a new company named Backbeat Inc., and restarted 8tracks for users in the US in April this year. He said, “I didn’t want this service, which had become an integral part of my life and my musical journey, shut down.” So, when he got to know at the end of the last year that the company was shutting down, he reached out to Porter and found out that there was an opportunity to acquire the business. Jeff Treichel, the new CEO of 8tracks, told me he was an avid user of the service and he loved the discovery aspect of the site. So Porter decided to shut it down by December 2019. That turned the firm profitable in 2018, however, the number of users continuously dropped out as people moved on to other services.Įventually, the company ran out of funding to sustain royalty payments and product development.
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Plus, it limited the number of listening hours per week for free users. It raised $2 million with a crowdfunding round in 2016. However, the site’s traffic started to drop shortly after this period, and the company needed an injection of money to supplement its ad-supported model. And given Google’s record, I wouldn’t have been surprised if it killed 8tracks after a few months. Porter told me that even Google was interested in buying the company - but the offer was turned down because it was more of an acqui-hire where the search giant wanted the company’s talent. The site became popular during 2012-2015 and had 8 million monthly active users at its peak. Credit: Twitter/David Porter David Porter, 8tracks founderĪt that time, when Spotify and Google Play were in their infancy and Apple Music wasn’t around, 8tracks became a popular way for many people to discover new tunes and interact with other music lovers through playlists. So you could find a ton of tracks that you might not get to listen to elsewhere on the internet. The draw was that anyone could become a DJ for others online, and introduce people to songs from your own. And you could be creative and attach new tags to classify the playlist in a more nuanced way - like sleepy chill or leather jacket. Plus, you could attach multiple labels to describe the mood of the playlist. The concept was simple, you pick eight or more tracks to build a ‘mix’ and let the world enjoy it. The company was established in 2008 by David Porter and Remi Gabillet with an idea to build a ‘music-oriented social network’. I spoke to its founder David Porter, and Jeffrey Treichel, the new CEO of the company, about its past, present, and future, and what makes the service unique after all these years. The service shut down last year, but it was revived by new owners this year, and they’re looking to bring it to prominence again.
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