If former Megaupload boss Kim Dotcom wants to make a bang with his upcoming music service, he’s certainly chosen a suitable name. Having ditched the working title of Megabox, Dotcom revealed over the weekend that the new venture will be called Baboom.
The theory: free music, with artists controlling their own profiles and getting a share of advertising revenues. There will also be a paid, ad-free version of Baboom, according to TorrentFreak, which uncovered the information.
“I am really excited about Baboom. I can’t wait for artists to see what i have created for them. Their entire career can be managed on Baboom. Artists never had more freedom, transparency and control,” Dotcom tells the site.
The news follows his resignation last week as a director of Megaupload’s cloud-storage successor in order to focus on the new music service, which he claims already has several millions of dollars in funding, and 22 developers.
The concept imagery above – as published on TorrentFreak – shows how the service will look, albeit with Alicia Keys, Robbie Williams and Will.I.Am merely placeholders rather than confirmed participants.
But this is one of the big questions around Baboom’s launch in the coming months: which “top artists” will sign up to a service being launched by one of the music industry’s current villains? (Or, if you’re FAC co-CEO Crispin Hunt, by “chubby Che Guevara Kim Dotcom, hell bent on furthering his own corpulent interests”.)
Dotcom may play up to the cartoon villain stereotype in some of his public appearances, but writing off Baboom based on that would be foolish. He’s also a smart entrepreneur, capable of putting together a talented team of developers.
Baboom is likely to be more Bandcamp or BandPage than Spotify (or Grooveshark) in its nature, unless Dotcom really does fancy another copyright dust-up in the courts. Much will depend on the calibre of musicians prepared to sign up.
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I’m a little bit puzzled about what Baboom actually is. Is it a music streaming service, with the catalog based on which musicians want to participate? If that is the case, I feel like the selection would be very underwhelming.
The design looks cool, however. I’ll be interested to see if the library is extensive enough to make it a competitor in the digital music market. With all of the online music services constantly being released, Baboom will have to come up with something completely new to stand a chance, I think.
Cool article. I had never heard of Baboom before. If it has all of the funding and support that you say he claims it has, then it may be a surprisingly good service.
Ryan Glaspell
rglaspel@mix.wvu.edu
RyanGlaspell.wordpress.com