[Luxembourg] Jamendo, a community of free, legal music published with Creative Commons licenses, is actively looking to sell to or merge with another company, TechCrunch Europe has learned. Jamendo CEO Laurent Kratz has confirmed rumors that had made their way to Twitter earlier this week.
The reason is fairly simple: Jamendo is running out of money after failing to raise a follow-up round of venture capital. The startup was looking to raise 1.5 million euros (roughly $2.15 million) after securing a ’significant amount’ in Series A funding back in June 2007. The company failed to come to an agreement with Mangrove Capital Partners, its original backer, and a potential new investor.
Kratz tells us Jamendo for the past 18 months has been frantically setting up a unique infrastructure for the promotion and the monetization of Creative Commons Music, building a vast catalog of music (200.000 tracks, give or take) along with the needed technical infrastructure and legal environment for such a venture to make waves.
In March 2009, the startup debuted an online shop where music licenses for multimedia projects (think film, tv shows, documentary, DVD, promotional video, websites, etc.) and background music for shops, restaurants, hotels and so on could be purchased. Kratz dubs Jamendo a ‘Fotolia for music’ based on that positioning.
For context: artists use the service to voluntarily allow anyone to share, download or stream their music for free or in exchange for 50% of royalties, and Jamendo doesn’t impose any usage limits upon users (for which it is loved). This goes beyond what stock music and sound effects providers like for instance AudioMicro and indie music distributors like Magnatune currently offer.
Jamendo says it has attracted around 2300 paying customers since the launch of the online store, bringing it to a turnover of over 300,000 euros in 2009 with a gross margin of 50%.
Kratz informed me that the startup, along with majority stakeholder Mangrove Capital Partners, has already engaged in talks over a potential sale or merger, although he didn’t want to name names. There are lots of suitors I can think of, but that is no guarantee a sale will follow.
We’ll keep you posted on where Jamendo ultimately ends up: under the wings of another company or in the deadpool.
Had to retweet this
This is too bad! I hope they don’t end up in the deadpool.
Personnally I think Jamando can or could be a good competitor in europe (at least in France where I use it).
For a while (begining of last year) I did replace it by deezer, because of the wonderfull gui deezer used to have.
But today I think Jamando progressed in gui (and also Deezer’s recent gui is surprisingly worste than previous one)
I just can not GET why Mangrove does not back it.
At least on this startup, I really have the feeling they made a good choice.
new used it stop using jile I think
yeah thats a real shame. Fingers crossed they don’t end up in the deadpool – its sh*te whenever a startup doesn’t make it.
*sigh*
That is a shame. I hope Jamendo survives. It’s given a lot of fun (and even some cash) to a lot of musicians and music fans. Creative Commons music needs a site like Jamendo.
CTW
CC has other sites.
They don’t need VC funded sites – CC itself was a grassroots movement by artists for artists… (here comes the plug…) which is what http://www.sectionz.com is for musicians, and we have CC licensing built into our site
.. . and although it kinda looks like shite atm the site is weeks away from the first new build in years.
http://sutros.com is another site that supports cc. Built by love, it doesn’t need crazy vc money to keep it running…
Just thought I should chip in that SoundCloud – http://soundcloud.com – has Creative Commons support too and is rapidly becoming one of the first places for an artist to upload their music on the web. (disclosure: I work at SoundCloud).
Anyone see on the site where they are asking for donations? Wikipedia does it all the time. Not sure why they don’t do the same.
They dont, operating costs are ad supported, any money you donate is given to the artists minus a .5 euro transaction fee.
http://www.sectionz.com –
- longest running music community online (pre-2000)
– free
– not VC funded and weeks away from a sweet new ruby build being launched.
- owners, devs and admins are all active community members and 100% volunteers.
grassroots wins in the long run
keep us in your favs & watch for the new build very soon.
And, the innovative out of the box concepts such as SEMG.09 can never be found elsewhere, for its the musicians playground and they choose the game they want to play!
Since the era of MP3.com… roots back to 1997, SectionZ rocks !!
Jamendo is awesome, I’d be sad to see it go. I discovered Chronique, which is now one of my favorite bands, on there.
Let’s hope someone acquires it without changing too much.
Commercial users of music, in our experience, are not interested in a creative commons license. The licensing model works for us, so my guess is that the costs of upkeeping their site was just too much – they could probably stick around if they get rid of some fat. Are the hosted / stored in the cloud? Where does all the burn go? Jamendo – we’d love to hear from you.
TBH, I won’t miss Jamendo! Through all the years of their existence they only got better in ignoring the community. All constructive critics were completly ignored and sometimes you even didn’t have an administrator who speaks your language (only french). Sometimes it took days to inform anyone that they added a full album with copyrighted music. In my opinion they never really cared about the community (only as content producers) – at least they didn’t communicate with the musicians and users.
Does anybody know the first Jamendo orange? They only brought bugs and removed a lot of the old features when updating the site to Jamendo blue and the actual Jamendo orange.
WOW. With that insight, seriously, I want you all to have a look at SectionZ!
You said it so right, the lack of communication or of active involvement makes no point of existence for any community. And that’s why SectionZ is what it has always been!
Admins / owners themselves are musicians! Voila.
Eagerly awaiting its new beta build.
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Jamendo is not a good business, BA, take care with your money !
Surely Jamendo was not perfect but they really have been trying to build a business around CC music. They shared thousand of euro&dollars with the artists. I know several artists who earn more than $3000 with Jamendo !
very few bitch, very fuckin few
maybe Vombat Radio and Jamendo could work together to keep on all the good things running – VR is also for independent artists, but deals with live concerts broadcasts from their own homes and clubs. just an idea
yeah thats a real shame. I hope they don’t end up in the deadpool.
Bonjour,
Jamendo existe depuis pratiquement 6 ans, c’est devenu le site n°1 de la musique libre sous licences CC. Jamendo c’est la liberté d’écouter, de télécharger, de choisir de donner directement aux artistes.
Jamendo connait une période difficile dû en partie à la conjoncture économique actuelle. Aujourd’hui nous avons l’occasion de soutenir Jamendo pour pouvoir continuer à en profiter. Pour cela :
1) Faites un don, même modeste (2€, 5€, 10€, 20€, ou plus), ici : http://www.jamendo.com/fr/artist/supportjamendo/shop (bouton : “Faire un don…”)
2) Buzzez sur internet, parlez-en à vos amis, utilisez vos réseaux sociaux, laisser des commentaires sur des sites comme Deezer, sur vos blogs préférés, etc. Parlez de Jamendo, insistez sur le téléchargement libre et légal, sur le partage. N’oubliez-pas de laisser des liens.
3) Faites tourner ce message, envoyez-le à vos amis Jamendo et encouragez-les à faire pareil.
Pour les mois à venir, des idées germent comme un système d’abonnement à l’année pour les artistes souhaitant diffuser en HD leurs albums (en plus de la diffusion « classique » qui resterait gratuite pour tous). Toutes les idées sont bonnes à prendre.
Pour plus d’informations et en débattre, voici la discussion (forum francophone) : http://www.jamendo.com/fr/forums/discussion/32290/
C’est peu, mais déjà beaucoup
——-
(English version)
Hello,
Jamendo has been almost 6 years, it became the No. 1 site for free music under CC licenses. Jamendo is the freedom to listen, download, choose to give directly to artists.
Jamendo knows a difficult period due in part to current economic conditions. Today we have the opportunity to support Jamendo to continue to enjoy. To do this:
1) Make a donation, however modest (2 €, 5 €, 10 €, 20 € or more) here: http://www.jamendo.com/fr/artist/supportjamendo/shop (button: “Add Don …”)
2) Buzz on the internet, talk to your friends, use your social networks, leave comments on sites like Deezer, your favorite blogs, etc.. Talk about Jamendo, insist on downloading free and legal sharing. Remember to leave links.
3) Rotate this message, send it to your friends Jamendo and encourage them to do the same.
For months, ideas germinate as a system of annual subscription for artists wishing to distribute their albums in HD (in addition to circulating “classic” that would remain free for all). All ideas are good to take.
For more information and debate, here is the discussion (french forum): http://www.jamendo.com/fr/forums/discussion/32290/ & (english forum : http://www.jamendo.com/en/forums/discussion/10373/how-can-we-help-save-jamendo/#Item_0)
It’s little, but already many
What about http://www.jangha.com? New Music community.
Jamendo was trying to fix LICENSING not make a happy playground for desperate, probably-not-that-talented musicians to bitch and moan about how hard it is to make it in the industry today. I hate the slap-dash use of the word community (especially in place of customer service), and I hope it dies with MySpace.
What blows is that this is a start-up which tried to innovate by offering artists a new business model and path to profit, and for everyone like it that gets knocked down, other potential innovators give up.
Sound Cloud really is a great service, but it doesn’t help bring producers and artists together, which is something Jamendo does.
You’re totally right but don’t you think that the design and the concept of Jamendo is a little bit out of date? Look @ bandcamp for example.
Rather bandcamp is outdated, because it is nothing but a music shop. Jamendo is a community site. You go there to share music, listen to, and talk about it with the musicians and your friends. It’s not the old shopping (buy me, buy me) type of thing you get everywhere else.
I think Jamendo just didn’t promote their PRO service enough. And even though they tried to make money, they couldn’t really figure out which way to go. I mean, does this website look like it’s made for professionals?
Jamendo should rather shift their focus from a plattform for everyone to a site, where filmmakers, advertisers and so on can seek for cheap but good CC music.
I find it very unfortunate that the communication between the operators and the members have failed so miserably, and the members are not sufficiently DEFENSE is conceded, as evidenced by the many opinions already. Nevertheless, I am in favor Jamendo, because I think everyone should get the opportunity to realize themselves and present their performance to a broad audience. In addition, Jamendo is one of the best platforms for exchanging views with friends about music. So I can fight only for the RECEIPT of Jamendo and hope that there will be Jamendo well into the future. Furthermore, I ask all members to think about times that each member would provide a unique amount of …(… 5 €) for Jamendo such a total sum of (3.478.055,00 €) and standing and is intended more than enough to save on Jamendo. Of course you would need in return also give members the opportunity to gain belonging to () for example, by Vote Nevertheless, it remains yet it must all work together to attract Jamendo alive. I’d be DELIGHTED if this line of thought would be times discussed in the forums. suchender_1
Well as an artist and listener on Jamendo I really hope they manage to sort something out.
Through Jamendo I’ve got my music out to 10s of thousands of people and even made a little bit of money. Before Jamendo that music only existed on a few CDs in friends and families houses.
Some people have moaned about their customer service, well I found them friendly and helpful, if a little slow at times.
Sion.