To everything there is a season – Why we're shutting down (opens in new tab)

> in early 2016, we were required to cut off streaming to listeners outside the US and Canada

I didn't fully understand who it was that required 8tracks to stop streaming abroad, but I wholeheartedly hate them so much. It was my preferred music service, I loved discovering all sorts of playlists and new music, while I've always disliked the Spotify client.

To see it dissappear, probably due to greed from royalty owners somewhere, was a loss. Now it's all just random Youtube mixes, but it is not the same.

I also used some other site that tuned music according to a chosen "mood"... but cannot recall the name right now. Stereomood, maybe?

You only need this line: And our growth in listening and revenues during 2013 meant we no longer qualified as a Small Webcaster; instead of paying royalties calculated as a percentage of revenues — such that royalties grow as revenues grow, as one would expect — we now had to pay high per-play rates as a Large Webcaster, taking us out of profitability.

The music licensing structure is set up to kill anything above a certain size, period. What is worse is that there is no size at which you are in a position to change that structure and disintermediate the entrenched interests of the major labels.

8tracks was amazing. Unfortunately, after they attempted the paid subscription model I moved to a paid subscription service that also included play on demand of songs and albums.

I had always hoped that 8tracks could have been purchased by a larger player(Pandora, Spotify, Apple Music) and then be allowed to continue its content model under one of those subscription plans. Unfortunately, that never happened.

Thanks 8tracks for, by far, the best playlist based streaming service. Good luck in the future to you all.

> for regulatory reasons, credit cards could not be used to invest; and while SeedInvest, the platform we used to execute the round, was able to accept debit cards initially, our debit card processor decided, several weeks in, that it no longer wished to support crowdfunding initiatives.

Cautionary tale for equity-based crowdfunding. I'd love to read about some success stories.

I’m interested to know to how much their data breach in 2017 [0] impacted attrition. This breach included email addresses and encrypted passwords.

I really enjoyed the service but like many, Spotify’s competing (albeit subpar) features led me astray as I consolidated my listening to a single platform. And being outside of the US and Canada, I couldn’t use it after the 2016 cut off.

Subsequently, 8tracks fell off the radar for me. Until news of the data breach, which was much more annoying to hear about - as it was for a service I couldn’t even use anymore. However, their transparency has always been great and the post-mortem and customer comms were quick.

RIP 8tracks, I still miss the service and there is still a large gap in curating playlists the way they did.

[0] https://blog.8tracks.com/2017/06/27/password-security-alert/

As a previous content creator, 8tracks was ergonomically hard to use and drove me away from trying to create more mixes. It's been a long while, but I recall having a lot of trouble ordering tracks (sometimes having to delete and re-upload all 8 tracks in perfect order), having trouble putting in metadata correctly, and the actively "we're afraid of copyrights" hostile presentation of my resulting work (hiding info from end users). I just disliked the entire experience, that much is memorable.

No time codes, could not list the tracks and times for curious listeners who wanted more, etc. - I ended up leaving self-comments on the mixes with all the various information because their UI and service would not let me present it as I wanted and listeners wanted. I ended up just walking away after the first half-dozen creations and moving on to a better service. For avid music aficiandos it was sub=par listening experience because of these hurdles, I didn't even like the phone app playing my own mixes. :(

Point is, failure of a company/solution is sometimes that it was just sub-par and wasn't engaged by users because there were better alternatives, and 8tracks (to me) was one of the sub-par content creation services. 100% opinion by an ex-member. :)

For me, 8tracks always was a prime example of a great user experience without "AI", "Big Data" or "Algorithms" The user clicked on a few keywords and gets playlists which were tagged with these keywords. Worked better then spotifies automatically created playlists.

For someone that never used it, what was the appeal of this service? I took a look at the site and didn't really get it.

What does this have over Spotify?

Is there a name to the concept of always getting in on something too late?

I won't say I'm a music fanatic, but I quite enjoying finding new music and new bands to listen to. I just checked out a few playlists and they were very solid for the most part. I can only imagine how useful this would've been to use regularly.

I adore 8tracks! Their mixes (and continually surreal and hilarious cover art) was always so much fun. I haven't found anything equivalent. They will be missed! I hope the team goes on to bigger and better things.

I'd love to know what Google offered for 8tracks back in 2013. If they reached nearly 8m MAU who streamed 30m+ hours each month, that's still basis for a pretty decent exit, no?

I have never used 8tracks but the concept and testimonials make it sound like something I would have loved. I noticed in the blog post that all playlist authors can export their playlist metadata. Would it be useful to collect and store all the playlist metadata in a shared public place? I hate to see all the work that has gone into creating these playlists disappear (and selfishly I would love to see a new service emerge to make them accessible).

A real shame. I used to use 8tracks all the time in the early 2010s. I'm actually surprised di.fm is still around (another oldie but goodie).

When Walmart shows up, small stores that sell the same goods go out of business.

Apple is the Walmart of tech.

I liked and used 8tracks but for me, it's strong point was that it was free. It's really hard to ask people for money when you're competing with free or 10$/mo for many many things.

You've got to really have an outstanding product - 8tracks was a good online playlist player. It is now gone.

If you want your startup to fail, be involved with the recording industry.

Sorry to hear 8tracks is shutting down, it was a cool app to hear new music back during their peak.

Wow, I'm surprised their advertising revenue was so little ($6k/month), considering how aggressive it got near the end. A large part of the reason I pivoted away from 8tracks was the aggressive advertising. Sad to see it was all for naught.

Was a great platform though, still one of the best ways to discover great music from human-created playlists.

“the company and its streaming service will wind down with the end of the decade, on December 31st, 2019”

Years started being numbered at 1 so the decade ends on December 31 2020.