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Media - Monday, October 29, 2007

Shawn Of The Dead: Snocap Perishes. imeem Prospers.

Within a mile of each other in San Francisco, digital music Snocap is in the dead zone while another digital music startup imeem is in 24 hour party mode. Snocap was founded by Napster founder Shaun Fanning has cut its head count by 60% and is looking for any buyers. Meanwhile another digital music startup imeem just signed another major record label, EMI, which joins the imeem's growing partners base of record majors who are cool with imeem's ad supported music sharing rollout.

The ironies are thick here as Fanning's first startup Napster could easily have morphed into iMeem but the record companies at the time refused to take Napseter off their s*#t list. Moreover, this time around imeem relies on Snocap to protect the record companies via Snocap's fingerprinting tech.

The demise of Snocap must came as a great surprise to its founders: people like super angel Ron Conway as well as Morgenthaler Ventures and WaldenVC. With so many digital music startups flourishing how did Snocap get is wrong? It seems that the money is either being made by iTunes, which doesn't use Snocap or by ad supported music sharing services like iMeem and LastFM. Fanning and company learned from their mistakes at Napster and are paying a price for that as the music landscape has shifted again.

Read - iMeem/EMI announcement