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snocap
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acquisitions
Shawn Fanning's Snocap purchased by music startup Imeem
Snocap, the company started by Napster creator Shawn Fanning, has been acquired by social network Imeem. What the fate of Fanning's sophomore effort proves: There may be second acts in the Valley, but they're usually not any good. Imeem had been using Snocap's digital registry to identify uploaded music for over a year. It also reunites a number of original Napster employees, like Snocap COO Ali Aydar who will be the new VP of operations at Imeem. Snocap had been rumored to be for sale for some time after slashing jobs. The 15 remaining employees will be absorbed into Imeem's growing San Francisco office — which added the staff from Anywhere.fm earlier this year.
party report
Yelp, the local-reviews site, is as infamous in San Francisco as it is nonfamous anywhere else in the country. Its parties, always hedonistic rampages of drunken conversations, burlesque troops, and makeout sessions in the photobooth, helped establish its local reputation and cement the loyalty of hardcore users. (Even the founders get in on the action!) Last night, Yelp held its holiday party at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Upon entering, I was greeted by a mass of San Francisco Yelptards, each louder than the next, all laughing, cajoling, flirting, and hugging each other. Self-congratulations were clearly in order.
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Party correspondent confronts ghosts of Yelp parties past
Yelp, the local-reviews site, is as infamous in San Francisco as it is nonfamous anywhere else in the country. Its parties, always hedonistic rampages of drunken conversations, burlesque troops, and makeout sessions in the photobooth, helped establish its local reputation and cement the loyalty of hardcore users. (Even the founders get in on the action!) Last night, Yelp held its holiday party at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Upon entering, I was greeted by a mass of San Francisco Yelptards, each louder than the next, all laughing, cajoling, flirting, and hugging each other. Self-congratulations were clearly in order.
More »
5:00 PM on Thu Dec 6 2007
By Megan McCarthy
2,333 views,
7 comments
Latest by "Fake" Dave McClure: Valleywag, the local gossip rag, is as infamous in San Francisco as it is nonfamous anywhere else in the country. more »
digital music
Shawn Fanning's company deals itself losing hand with new music play
Snocap, the peer-to-peer music store started by Napster creator Shawn Fanning, is losing money, staff, founders, and partners. Not to mention money. So what's its new gambit, after licensing peer-to-peer technology and building MySpace stores both flopped? Enter BoomShuffle, a Web widget for creating music mixes using content from the Snocap store. It sounds less like a music product than a startup strategy, though. What do you do when your first two business plans fail? Why, you boomshuffle them! It's the game every entrepreneur can play! Unfortunately for Snocap, I suspect the deck is stacked against it.
myspace
Zazzle to follow Snocap to MySpace glory
Selling music on MySpace worked out so well for the now-downsized Snocap. Now, Zazzle.com is giving it a go, helping sell music merchandise through MySpace. It's the kind of original business plan you have to expect from a company's whose slogan is "infinite one-of-a-kindness." More »
digital music
New details on Snocap's CD Baby breakup
When Snocap and music retailer CD Baby ended their partnership earlier this month, Snocap made like it pulled the plug. But today CD Baby president Derek Sivers put out numbers that show why it's no surprise Snocap had to lay off 31 of its 57 employees. Its partnership with CD Baby only generated $12,000 in revenues. More »
followup
Shawn Fanning leaves his Snocap baby an orphan
Snocap may have started as Napster creator Shawn Fanning and bad boy Jordan Mendelson's baby, but we've heard both Valley hipsters have washed their hands of their failing creation. A tipster reports that Fanning is long gone and focused on his latest startup, Rupture, a social network for videogamers. Mendelson, too, is working on a new project and is likely to leave Snocap in a few months. As for the cause of the layoffs, a tipster says the CD Baby deal's failure isn't the proximate cause. Instead? More »
snocap
Shawn Fanning's baby killed by CD Baby
What led to yesterday's layoffs at Snocap, the digital-music startup founded by Napster creator Shawn Fanning? The breakdown of a deal last week with online retailer CD Baby, if not the proximate cause, was surely a signal of the startup's incipient meltdown. CD Baby is a music store that allows independent artists to sell their music at their own price, and Snocap's most significant partner besides MySpace. But, judging by the comments of CD Baby artists whose songs were being sold through Snocap's MySpace stores, that partnership has had little value. More »
rumormonger
Snocap lays off 60 percent of its employees?
A tipster reports that Snocap, the once-hot digital music startup from Napster founder Shawn Fanning and Silicon Valley bad boy Jordan Mendelson, has laid off 60 percent of its staff, and the company is up for sale. If true, it's not surprising, giving industry trends. Snocap was something of a second coming for Fanning; rather than fight the music labels, he aimed to help them release copy-protected files on peer-to-peer networks, so they'd get paid even if users shared files. But despite cutting a range of deals, the idea never really took off. And lately, the music industry has started to embrace the idea of doing without digital-rights-management software altogether. It's not clear who would want to buy Snocap, really. At any rate, this explains why we haven't seen Mendelson, pictured here in bubblier times, at many parties lately. Anyone hear more about Snocap's firings? Drop us a line.
silicon valley users guide
5 lessons on how to triumph in the face of adversity
Dalton Caldwell, founder of the little-known social network and media sharing site iMeem, is in the news because Warner Music has dropped a copyright suit against his company Instead, Warner has granted Caldwell's users free access to the label's entire music catalog in exchange for a portion of iMeem's advertising revenue. Caldwell may not be the most powerful social-network CEO, but he's certainly the scrappiest, and this is just the latest example in his history of responding well to adversity. You could learn a lesson from him Or five lessons, actually: More »
3:36 PM on Thu Jul 12 2007
By Tim Faulkner
1,131 views,
2 comments
Latest by Slava: It might be of note that Pitchfork Media uses iMeem for all their featured song previews and given that Pitchfork are such powerful taste-makers amongst a certain demographic, it would make sense for some record companies to expose their music more »
art
Silicon Valley's golden men
This weekend's must-see movie isn't anything out of Hollywood — it's "Living Pictures/Men in Gold" at SFMOMA, a 40-minute video homage to seven Silicon Valley rich dudes. Created by French artist Sylvie Blocher, the video includes interview-montages with Snocap's Rusty Rueff, former Apple exec and "recovering assoholic" Jean-Louis Gassée, Eventbrite's Kevin Hartz, McDougall Creative's Eric McDougall, Eight Inc.'s Wilhelm Oehl, and Mayfield Fund's Chamath Palihapitiya (pictured). Yep, that's only six — no idea who the seventh is, though Kathy Levinson, formerly of E-Trade, had her footage rendered unusable due to "technical problems." Mmmm-hmmm. Read the Chronicle story for several good sexmoney quotes from the stars, and let us know your opinion if you see the exhibit.
jordan mendelson
