Entry tags:
Goodbye 8tracks
Founder and CEO David Porter wrote a blog post explaining, in detail, the life and death of 8tracks. This may be the first time I watched a tech company fail when I really, really wanted it to succeed.
8tracks has always seemed like a thoughtful little corner of the internet where I could find playlists put together by real people and listen to "mood-based" playlists, as 8tracks called them. The site was also a huge fandom space for awhile, mostly because of the easy tagging features. It was my go-to spot to find fanmixes, cover art, and pithy ship or fandom commentary. I've been a member since January 2014, and I became a plus member as soon as they offered that option. 8tracks really filled a niche for me - maybe because I remembered the not-so-distance past when my friends and I used to exchange homemade CD playlists. I would be delighted to hear new music in my car and not know what was coming next. The magic of 8tracks was that someone else made a playlist based on my interests or fandoms, and it regularly turned out that I actually liked the songs! Spotify doesn't have that kind of magic for me.
My main complaint was that the mobile app was not useful and not compatible with driving apps. You also couldn't look up individual songs to play, but I didn't really mind that. David Porter points out that they were aware of these issues, but were spending their money and energy trying to keep up with licensing and operating a music site.
I think tumblr is really the only place to go for fanmixes now (since Spotify is completely overwhelming in terms of searching for and finding actual playlists made by real people).
One of David Porter's parting comments really rings true for me:
8tracks has always seemed like a thoughtful little corner of the internet where I could find playlists put together by real people and listen to "mood-based" playlists, as 8tracks called them. The site was also a huge fandom space for awhile, mostly because of the easy tagging features. It was my go-to spot to find fanmixes, cover art, and pithy ship or fandom commentary. I've been a member since January 2014, and I became a plus member as soon as they offered that option. 8tracks really filled a niche for me - maybe because I remembered the not-so-distance past when my friends and I used to exchange homemade CD playlists. I would be delighted to hear new music in my car and not know what was coming next. The magic of 8tracks was that someone else made a playlist based on my interests or fandoms, and it regularly turned out that I actually liked the songs! Spotify doesn't have that kind of magic for me.
My main complaint was that the mobile app was not useful and not compatible with driving apps. You also couldn't look up individual songs to play, but I didn't really mind that. David Porter points out that they were aware of these issues, but were spending their money and energy trying to keep up with licensing and operating a music site.
I think tumblr is really the only place to go for fanmixes now (since Spotify is completely overwhelming in terms of searching for and finding actual playlists made by real people).
One of David Porter's parting comments really rings true for me:
We — the remaining team at 8tracks — all think it’s still to hard to find playlists with a “soul behind the music.” User programmed playlists on Spotify and YouTube are great, but they remain relatively hard to navigate to find the best ones for a particular person’s taste, time or place. And there’s not (as yet) an ecosystem to allow curators to flourish. There’s still work to be done.
