Hard News by Russell Brown

Doh…
Badaboom is down at the moment.

BTW: taking your your points on your recent post about purchasing where possible (I’m a premium Rdio subscriber- who goes to as many local gigs of my fav artists as possible), so you recommend purchasing ALAC files? Concerned about storage space on devices. (and as yet I can’t add my own content to Rdio).

um... how do I post a screengrab again?

Doh…
Badaboom is down at the moment.

Hmm. Must have been brief. It's working now.

so you recommend purchasing ALAC files? Concerned about storage space on devices. (and as yet I can’t add my own content to Rdio).

ALAC will save you 40-60% on file size, so it's still biggish. You can get iTunes to sync 256k versions to your mobile device to save space on that.

That sounds like a genuinely good royalty structure - I hope it's successful.

Its investors and management are in New Zealand.

It sounds good, I joined up after your post last night and I was interested in:

We’re always excited about meeting new people and growing the team, so feel free to get in touch if you are:

but I was a little bamboozled by:

Ask questions, talk about something exciting, tell us about your projects. We’d love to hear about it.

Avenida da Boavista n.º 1788

4100-116 Porto

Portugal

So thanks for clarifying that:

Baboom’s Head of Content and Platform Mikee Tucker works out of the two-person office shared with his Loop Recordings label upstairs at Real Groovy Records in Auckland. Ninety per cent of Baboom shares are currently held by Mega investor Michael Sorenson, after an unsuccessful share offering on the Australian exchange last year. Baboom’s CEO is Grant Edmundson and its CFO is music industry veteran Tony Smith.

That sounds like a genuinely good royalty structure – I hope it’s successful.

It strikes me that it aligns with what people think they're doing through other streaming services.

Does it do a stream of suggested music, or do you need to select your hundred tracks and it shuffles them?

Thank the stars you're talking about music. I thought this was going to be the most insensitive headline ever on PA.

Hmmm... management in Auckland, in-house programmers in Portugal...

Thats a mighty big house, I would have thought I'd have noticed it, does it cause some navigational problems for all the container ships bringing us music players from China?

Thats a mighty big house … does it cause some navigational problems for all the container ships bringing us music players from China?

we all live in the one big room…
:- )

I'm still on the Cale-o Diet...

Does it do a stream of suggested music, or do you need to select your hundred tracks and it shuffles them?

The latter (although shuffling is optional) – but the former would certainly be worth them looking at.

And right on cue: Streaming Music is Ripping You Off, which proposes the same payment model as Baboom is using.

It's worth a read for a deeper look at why the current model sucks.

I had a play with Baboom and, for comparison, Spotify.

Baboom would have the better UI (newer, I guess) and the ability (which I didn't test) to upload your own music collection. It seems a bit thin on content, especially if your tastes don't align to the Loop Recordings catalogue. I'm not sure how useful the music collection thing would be without an offline mode - given I'd want to listen to my tunes on roadtrips when I won't have a 3G connection.

Spotify has one of those UIs that buries the "free" link in the hope that you'll give up and fork over a credit card number. It's got better suggestions, but it rolls all forms of dance music into the "cheesy EDM" genre.

I think both services could vastly improve the search / suggestion features. I was expecting much better (Netflix is also crap in this area). Even Juno (a shop rather than a streaming siet) has better suggestions.

Also, what I would like to see is an integration of (alternative/student) radio into a streaming service, such that you can listen to a radio station's livestream and get given options to buy / favourite the tunes you hear.

Personally, Active is my main curator and guide for music (in Auckland, it was B and George), but going from hearing a tune to buying a copy is something I don't get around to as much as I'd like. If I could click "like" and have it recorded, then have buying options (including maybe which local record stores had stock) that would be awesome.

Baboom would have the better UI (newer, I guess) and the ability (which I didn’t test) to upload your own music collection. It seems a bit thin on content, especially if your tastes don’t align to the Loop Recordings catalogue.

Yes, they're open about that – the soft launch is mostly to show that it exists and works.

I’m not sure how useful the music collection thing would be without an offline mode – given I’d want to listen to my tunes on roadtrips when I won’t have a 3G connection.

There is an offline mode – maybe only on the mobile app? I'll have to go and look again.

There is an offline mode – maybe only on the mobile app? I’ll have to go and look again.

on my mobile devices baboon automatically downloaded the tracks I'd bookmarked , or whatever they all it, on desktop - this was most excellent for me (sure others will hate that) - not a fan of how spotify does this, its a real pain if you want to add dozens of songs to offline as it stops and starts and doesn't function as soon as the device goes to sleep

silverback chair?

baboon

You 'Bush Doctors', eh...
A mammalian audio system descended from the Grea Tapes?
I wonder if they have a discount for stuff from Mandrill Studios?

:- )

BABOOM launched Monday with a call to artists for content and we pretty much launched straight after beta that trusted artists were involved in. Since launch hundreds of independent artists have signed up on their own accord and dozens of labels such as Darla and BBE are testing BABOOM with key releases. On Friday EDM.COM signed up with 10,000 artists and 8.8 million followers and have started putting hundreds of releases live on their page.

Two aggregators, Symphonic Distribution and Forjj Digital who have thousands of artists and labels, are integrated on streaming a constant flow of releases into BABOOM. See their announcement: http://blog.symphonicdistribution.com/2015/08/baboom-integrated. We are in talks many other niche aggregators as well as aggregators who carry song catalogues in the 2 million plus zone.

The key with large catalogues is staying true to the new BABOOM model whilst integrating them. We won’t take a large catalogue for the sake of it. The artists still need control and direct daily payments and we must stay true to the BABOOM vision.

Mikee

On Friday EDM.COM signed up with 10,000 artists and 8.8 million followers and have started putting hundreds of releases live on their page

Nice work. That's a biggie.