In 2018, that decision was reversed, bringing back unlimited streaming. In late 2016, 8tracks limited users without a Plus account to only 1 hour of streaming a day, and users who were completely logged out would only be able to listen to a single track. In 2016, 8tracks was stopped by legal concerns from offering services outside of the United States and Canada. According to the Forbes article I just linked, 8tracks calculated that they could get as many as 40,000 supporters to fund the platform their goodbye blog post indicates that they managed to get only 4,464 total investors. In 2016, 8tracks tried to switch to crowdfunding, hoping to raise money from users interested in owning shares of the company. Because of its license, 8tracks couldn’t offer offline listening or unlimited skips, or really much other than a nice badge next to your user icon. 8tracks supplemented this by showing ads, which could be banished by a $29.99/year Plus membership, but that Plus membership couldn’t offer the premium features users could get out of other services. On an FAQ page about the Plus service, outright admitted that it wasn’t making a profit, and had only raised about five million dollars to support the service over the past decade, all while still paying for artists unlike comparable services. However, the service seemed to have a hard time making a profit. 8tracks would eventually host 3.5 million playlists, offering playlists catered to moods, situations, fictional characters, or any other number of factors. 8tracks didn’t do either, making it much more appealing as a way to share music on social media. And other services were still figuring out how to share music socially Spotify required users to create an account, and put ads in playlists for users who didn’t pay for Premium. It was more common at the start of the decade for artists to refuse to host their music on streaming services, or to make it exclusive to certain platforms, so this made 8tracks’ offerings way more diverse at the time. Because the service allowed users to upload songs from their personal music library, users could share music that wasn’t available to stream anywhere else, or was harder to find in their given country. 8tracks’s unique features, at one point, let it stand out from the crowd. They partnered with Rolling Stone to make playlists, hosted musicians who wanted to promote their music via the service, and sponsored brand playlists. This was about when their popularity peaked. Which was a big part of why, unlike other music upload services, it was never sued into bankruptcy.Ĩtracks received positive press when it launched and was listed as one of Time’s “50 Best Websites” in 2011, the same year I joined the service. 8tracks also had public performance licenses with ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC, meaning it was legally similar to public radio. It was in no way, shape, or form, an on-demand service. And, you could only use so many skips in an hour, limiting how much you could control what you were listening to. And playlists were shuffled every time you listened to them. If you searched for “Mumford and Sons,” for example, you would get playlists that had Mumford and Sons music somewhere in the playlists–could be first, could be third, but since 8tracks didn’t allow you to see complete track listings, you would only know if you listened. You couldn’t search for and play on demand certain musicians and songs. Using 8tracks was different from any other streaming music platform. But it was my favorite music streaming platform. Neither the end-all nor the be-all of music streaming services, many people likely never used it, and I wonder how much it will actually be missed. 8tracks is set to suspend its services permanently by the end of the day.
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