From Rick Munarriz of Liquid Stereo...


I was oblivious to 1Sound.

I knew that Rod Underhill -- an attorney, author and member of the MP3.com founding group -- was up to something new music-related, but I was sketchy on the details. That all changed when Lana Crowley contacted me. Rod's partner in the venture wanted to talk to me. He had some ideas that he wanted to bounce off of me. He wanted to know if I was interested in lending a hand.


Why did Michael Danke want a piece of me? It could have been a combination of things. I was one of the few indie artists to have sampled the major label life when my band Paris By Air was briefly signed to Sony's Columbia Records. I didn't exactly fit the mode of the starving musician. I had an MBA. I was a writer-analyst for the Webby-award winning Motley Fool website.


Michael would later admit that he wanted me for my words. On the MP3.com message board I had created a NO FEE SOPHIE persona, trying to assist my fellow artists with tips and tricks for online, and offline, promotion. I hosted virtual promo clinics. I kept my identity under wraps as long as possible, but I welcomed the opportunity to take off my disguise under my own terms. MP3.com took notice and had me write weekly promo tips that appeared on the artist log-in page. MP3.com invited me to be the panel moderator for the Getting Signed forum at its final ACE event in San Diego.


Michael appreciated my word weaving ways. He needed editorial content for his new site and figured I would be a natural. He also needed someone to moderate the 1Sound message board and he liked the way I was able to remain diplomatically positive through many of the MP3.com flame wars.


I never bothered to ask if there was any money in it for me. I wanted in. The more Michael told me of the 1Sound vision the more I realized that it was the right way to go. The whole theme park concept where blogs, satire and other editorial content would help draw an entirely different crowd was appealing to me because I had long lamented how music sites had failed to market beyond the ranks of fellow musicians.


While no uploads would be turned away, a musicologist system in which songs would be ranked, made sense to me. Only the top rated songs would be eligible for the charts. Whether a song would be eligible for featured spots and plays on the streaming webcast stations would also depend on the song's quality rating. Yes, I realized that would turn off a lot of musical artists, especially those who would be ranked poorly, but after hearing too many useless charts that were gamed to the point where one had to stream through a lot of garbage to get to the good stuff, I found the 1Sound vision fresh and promising.


Music sites were losing a ton of money by putting up with gaming. Folks would band together and just play each other's songs to elevate their chart position and everyone lost. The best song typically got buried. The site got hit with huge bandwidth bills on the hosting side. The fan would tune into the chart and never return after getting turned off by the chart track quality and assume things would only get worse


So, no, I never asked to get paid. Michael had mentioned that I would probably be the first to draw a paycheck down the line, but I was offered a 3% stake in the venture and that was good enough for me.


I went to work. To save some coin, the site's programming was outsourced to Romania. While there were bugs here and there the Romanians did a more than capable job. The site looked slick. The graphics, created mostly by Dee from Caustic Soda, were snappy yet conveyed business. By the summer of 2002 early signups were being taken and I did my part in the recruiting process. On various artist-related message boards I tried my best to explain the 1Sound vision -- at least as much as I was told to divulge.


There was one amazing aspect to the 1Sound plan that never came to be. Michael and Rod were working on a promotion in which site visitors that would be streaming the station would earn chances at a huge prize payout. That would have really opened up the site to the casual user that loved the potential lottery aspects of sites like Pogo.com and IWon.com. Ultimately, the insurance companies wanted too much in premiums before underwriting that kind of policy, no matter how obscure the odds of actual winning may have been.


I was never privy to the power struggle between Michael and Rod. Michael wanted to launch slowly, building up a set number of blog accounts before opening up the editorial areas and signing up a set number of artists before launching the message board. In December of 2002 Rod decided to open as many areas as were ready -- which meant everything save for the editorial content areas.


Timing was the key as MP3.com was about to get restrictive on the number of songs that would be featured on free accounts and many artist-friendly features like deep-linking (where artists could play the MP3s off the 1sound server no matter where they were) were no-no on the MP3.com site. The MP3 uploads allowed on 1Sound for each artist page went from 2 to 3 to 4 to, finally, 6. The site never wanted to be the hub of an artist's entire works -- only the best tracks of any particular artist.


I didn't hear from Michael for awhile, eventually both Rod and Michael confirmed that they had parted ways. I was a simpleton in a simple role. Despite all of my experience in analyzing Internet companies (I had been doing just that for Fool.com since 1995) I chose the passive route. I never questioned 1Sound's financial state. I never questioned the changing faces. Lana put me in contact with Michael and Rod yet -- poof -- I never saw her in 1Sound duty again. Zeeza was going to create some hip editorial work including zodiacs and add a little femme fatale sex appeal to counter the content that Rod and I would eventually be scribing but after designing my avatar for the boards and some emails exchanged over the first few months of the site, she too seemed to have vanished. Dee, who took some time off for health concerns in her family, never came back. And, yes, Michael was now gone too.


Michael went on to take his blog-driven vision to blogdrive.com. He was, heck -- is, brilliant. While everyone may remember how 1Sound was able to sign up more than 1500 artists the site also managed to register more than 6000 bloggers. Here were folks scribbling about their daily lives -- bringing an entirely new demographic of teenage angst and more to the 1Sound front door where artists had always wondered why their music was never exposed to the ideal audience. How did Michael get so many blog-minded writers to show up? He was a text-ad visionary, recognizing that paying pennies for targeted ads on sites like Google and Yahoo! made perfect business sense.


While I tried to keep my nose to the grindstone I missed everyone who had played a part in the site's formative days. What's worse is that Rod and Michael's split was not amicable. Michael felt he was forced out. Rod felt that things were going too slow. Yet that created the biggest roadblock of all -- the 1Sound domain was originally registered by Michael. Rod and 1Sound's financial silent partner Bryan controlled the server hosting accounts yet Michael had the domain. It would seem that if either party wanted to dismantle the site it would have been easy. Michael could have the domain point elsewhere. Rod had the keys to the content.


While each one claimed legal ownership it wasn't a pretty situation. I was cut of the diplomatic mold where no bridge was ever burned and I was asked to keep producing for a divided company that may have been one nasty argument away from evaporation. Rod argued that Michael was locked out of the ability to redirect the domain. Either way, it was a wrinkle in what had been such an amazing start.


Thanks to everyone's work early on, 1Sound became a hub of traffic. Our daily Alexa rating was peaking at better than 20,000 which was amazing considering how so many music sites that had been around for years were ranked significantly lower. Along with the site's stance on filtering for quality, companies like Microsoft were in the early stages of content distribution talks. Yet after Rod and Michael split the company's finances began to weigh heavy.


As far as overhead, 1Sound was lean because no one save for James (the site's excellent techie-minded programmer) was drawing a paycheck during the final months of 1Sound. There were two hosting companies charging $300 and $600 a month respectively, and James was on for $1,500 a month. That was $2,500 in fixed overhead and the site had yet to get ambitious in terms of monetizing itself.


An investor was needed. Bryan found a willing ear in a publicly-traded Vancouver company by the name of Consolidated Gulfside Resources. CEO Jack Wasserman had a vision of piecing a few music sites together and he was drawn to 1Sound's content and traffic.


I found out about this only after a letter of intent was made public over the summer in 2003. Up to that point the site was starting to come undone. James was still around but after not being paid due to the site's sluggish finances, he was understandably not working on the site. After a few months of negotiations between Wasserman and Bryan, Rod stepped into the picture and James was paid. He also commissioned James to do some amazing programming work that featured localized charts. Yes, the old MP3.com had localized charts but these were a thing of beauty with local classifieds, area information and more. It was great stuff.


Wasserman had brought on a pair of techies to help gauge the logistics behind his desired changes to the site as well as implement some necessary bug-fixing. When Wasserman had a change of heart and decided not to pursue the buyout of 1Sound, one of the techies approached Rod about not being paid by Wasserman.


Heading into the extended Thanksgiving weekend of 2003, the hosting logs showed that the Wasserman-hired techie logged in and, effectively, shut down most of the site. It was brutal timing. MP3.com had announced that it was about to shut down until CNET would re-establish itself in early 2004 and that left 250,000 artists scrambling for a new place to host their music.


In November, realizing that Wasserman was set to move on, Rod turned to me for ideas on making 1Sound a viable, sustainable venture. I had been passive all this time. I regret it now. But at the time I just felt it wasn't my place to question the direction or even wonder about the financial well being of the site. I realized that the site was going to die, Rod was getting disillusioned and I had been quiet for too long.


I proposed a three-pronged attack.


1. Reconcile with Michael Danke. If 1Sound was to continue it would need to patch up that rift. Rod didn't think that would be possible. He had suggested eventually migrating the site over to Bryan's Sureplay.com domain. I also offered up Unsigned.net out of my collection of domain names. Yet this would have taken us, almost literally, back to square one in the sense of having to re-establish ourselves with a brand new name. Too many artists and too much press had been generated by 1Sound.com to squander.


2. Grow revenue. Again, thanks to the Motley Fool I had box seats to witness the boom and bust of the dot-com bubble. I may not have known how to repair the severed bond between Michael and Rod but I did know that the site was doing precious little to grow revenue. Given Rod's traffic projections we could have made a good chunk of change by something as simple as implementing Google text ads on our pages. We needed to team up with an affiliate program like Mixonic so we could offer CDs to fill the void that MP3.com would be leaving behind, and profit from the fact that it would be completely outsourced and incremental revenue-wise. We needed to launch the editorial areas that had been under wraps for too long. By putting out more written content we would be able to attract the non-musician crowd and lower our average cost per page served while attracting a target audience that would have been less immune and more likely to follow through on following our sponsored ads.


3. Cut expenses. I knew that we were overpaying at least one of our hosting companies. We had to shop around for a better deal. I certainly didn't want to ask James to accept a lower paycheck though maybe there was a way to substitute some equity in the company in the near-term.


As the site was brought back online, Rod had agreed to the outline of the plan. After consulting with Bryan I was assigned the title of President and I would be entitled to a larger chunk of the company. All I asked was for Rod and Bryan to finance the company through January to give my plan two months to see if it was bearing fruit. Rod agreed.


Then it happened. The logs showed that the same programmer went back in and wiped out the site's database. The first hack was a quick fix. The second was potentially fatal. There was an amazing outpouring of support as sites like IC-Musicmedia and ArtistLaunch offered to help get 1Sound back on track. That's the one image that I will always remember. Instead of laughing at a rival site's problem and drooling over the potential of one less site to share artists with, the indie-minded sites wanted to help.


It was early December and Rod explained that he wanted to see if Wasserman would take care of his programmer so he could come fix what was dismantled. After a few days, Wasserman wrote us all back. The programmer had denied any wrongdoing. I recognized the stalemate. I knew this was about to get legal.


The last post on the message board -- just about the only part of the site that was functioning properly in the end -- was on January 1, 2004. It was a toast to the site coming back strong in 2004. Shortly after that, even the message board found error messages.


Will 1Sound come back? I sure hope so. However, every day that the site remains offline is one day wasted. It's one day removed from the high traffic ratings and the promising portal meetings. This is not a pretty story yet I can't pinpoint a villain beyond the hacker that ultimately destroyed the site. I walk away with respect for everyone and the parts they played in growing 1Sound's presence and nurturing its vision.


The OMD (online music distribution) model is not dead. 1Sound had so much promise. It just never had a chance. I learned a lot -- maybe enough to eventually prove that the model works.


You can create a site based on free music -- for both the musician and the potential fan -- and still cover expenses. I miss 1Sound. Badly. I also refuse to concede that the defeat is permanent. Ultimately I guess I am a hungry musician after all.


-- Rick Munarriz

Liquid Stereo



Keep The Music Alive

2002 Interview with
Rod Underhill
CEO, 1Sound.com
 
 
IJ:  With the failure of other OMDs (Riffage.com), and the financial troubles of some OMDs (mp3.com's parent company, Javamusic, etc), why pick this time to launch a new online music site?

RU:   To me, it is clearly the perfect time to launch 1Sound.com.  Not only that, I’m reading Percy Shelly’s Ozymandias at the same time.


IJ:   What is it about 1Sound.com that will be different from the other OMDs and music sites?


RU:   In virtually every way imaginable save that music will be present. Sometimes the wheel just has to be reinvented. Or, perhaps more accurately, if the original wheel was designed to look like a square, maybe returning to the drawing board is warranted.  Not that any of the other OMDs are “square wheels, “ of course. Still, it seemed to me a very good idea to reinvent the concept of OMD from the ground up.  We designed 1Sound.com with one mantra in mind: nothing previously existing is sacred.  Rather than merely moving “the cheese” we intended to beam the cheese” to another universe.


IJ:   As 1Sound is "filtering" artists for quality, what specific aspects of a song or artist are you looking at in determining their acceptability or promotability?


RU:  We certainly are not filtering artists. We are filtering songs for quality.   In a general sense, filtering “good” songs from “bad” songs is very easy to do. To paraphrase Bob Dylan, “it doesn’t take a weatherman to know if a song blows.”  The opposite side of the spectrum takes a lot more talent: finding songs that truly push their related genre forward to new heights. Or even finding a song that creates a new genre.  “Rocket 88” was recorded by Ike Turner in 1951 and many music experts consider that song to be the first Rock song ever recorded. Perhaps there is a song already available on the Internet that has the ability to change the course of modern music. Finding that song among the noise and understanding it to be what it actually is…that’s the challenge. 


Of course, that’s a lofty goal. For now all I can promise is that we’ll hose off the filth and uncover the gems that lay buried underneath.  No doubt such a statement will sorely vex those artists who have been spending their time shoveling their musical dung on the top of great songs.  They should take heart that there are still plenty of locations where their “music” is welcomed.  For now, at least.


We’ve also come up with a clever way to involve the general public into one significant aspect of our global filtering process. Any song uploaded in good faith deserves the chance to find its own audience.  The “approved” song notice on our artist pages doesn’t mean what people might think it means. All will be revealed and it is best to leave your OMD preconceptions at the door.


IJ:   Can you explain the "theme park" concept in a little more detail?


RU:   The concept is a lot more complicated than it might sound and it incorporates a year of market research.  However, the goal is to provide entertainment that is designed to enlarge and enhance an artist’s audience.


IJ:   Currently artists are permitted to submit 1 or 2 songs for review. Will that number be expanded soon, and if so, will there be a limit on the number of songs on an artist's page?


RU:   The presence of 1 or 2 full songs on an artist page should be sufficient to establish an artist in the eyes of the audience. The trend to give away too much music flies in the face of the need to generate CD sales. Independent artists have a far superior position to signed acts in this regard.  What signed act doesn’t have their best songs available for free on the Internet?  Unsigned acts simply have to get smarter about what they are doing. They need to stop thinking only in the short term. Acts that have been stuffing themselves on free government cheese have to understand that eventually even the government will go out of the free cheese business.


IJ:   Currently 1Sound is accepting only 128 mp3s. Most other sites accept up to 256 and higher (mp3.com only takes 192). Considering that 1Sound is shooting for quality, will you soon be accepting mp3s encoded at higher rates?


RU:   Why stop at 256?  Why not use actual wav files? Why not simply give your CDs away?  The fact that FM radio is of less sonic quality than a CD enhances CD sales.  Artists have to understand that 128 is perfectly fine for establishing whether or not a song is fantastic. Artists have to stop shooting themselves in the foot.  Besides, a higher bit rate will not make a crappy song sound any better than it actually is. A piece of crap is a piece of crap, even if it has a ribbon on top.


IJ:   According to your site faq, 1Sound will be providing the "best streaming audio shows on the internet." Can you give us more detail about these shows, such as will they be recorded or live, mp3 or some other format, genre-specific, available 24x7, etc?


RU:   The 1Sound.com streaming audio shows will incorporate the 1Sound.com philosophy.  People will love the music, and will hopefully involve the shows into their daily lives.  Like any other type of broadcast entertainment, the production, talent and execution are of prime importance.  In terms of content: everything and anything is possible.  The streaming audio shows have been designed to evolve over time, as well. We have many cool plans in store for the audio shows, and we expect to create the “golden age” of Internet “radio."


IJ:   Will 1Sound offer the artists licensing opportunities, and if so, could you provide some specifics?


RU:   Interesting that you should ask that.  This Fall I will be teaching a course in Music Licensing Law at my law school.  Certainly, I am using this time to reflect on music licensing as it relates to independent artists. I do think that licensing offers great opportunities to independent artists. Perhaps, in a way, everything that 1Sound.com is doing supports licensing opportunities for our artists.   If and when 1Sound.com offers a specific music licensing program or individual opportunities, we’ll be sure to announce it.


IJ:   Will artists have the opportunity to sell CDs directly through 1Sound?


RU:   We think that CD sales are very important. However, I think that proper and professional CD manufacturing and design are very important. We’ll be working to enhance CD sales for our artists in various and exciting ways. I don’t think that 1Sound.com would care to be in the CD manufacturing business. I do think that we will be in the CD promotional business.


IJ:   Can you provide a definite date for the "grand opening" or public launch of the site?


RU:   A lot of people felt this way when Disneyland was set to open in 1955. All I can say is this: we’ve finished the Matterhorn and everything else in the park and all we are doing is putting the final touches of paint on the buildings in Main Street. “Walt” is walking around and giving everything his final once over. He seems happy.


We will open very soon.  In the meanwhile, please enjoy the new “test drive” attraction previews that will open before you know it.

:hmm:

Something still smells "wolf" and "sheep" to me.

Or... "how do we make money off the backs of the hopefull idiot indie musicians who give it away for free anyhow?"

...but I have too little to go on with just these two postings. Never heard of 1Sound B4, so I must go into a "wait and C" holding pattern. Sure, they may be $$$ driven (and that would be ok ...to a point.)

...my advice. CAUTION and CROSSED FINGERS!

Shmoo, of Electric Gypsy
Support Local and Independent Music!

I immediately wondered if Jack Wasserman was any relation to Lew Wasserman.

"Never heard of 1Sound B4, so I must go into a "wait and C" holding pattern."

Don't think it matters Schmoo. I got the impression that this was a eulogy for a poorly-executed idea.

who knows...

We should stop wishing for manna from heavan anyway and get off our asses and DO IT OURSELVES!

(...not to say we can't bitch at the unfairness of it all while we claw and scratch our way up!)

SUPPORT LOCAL AND INDEPENDENT MUSIC!

Shmoo, of Electric Gypsy!

Think I heard about this on one of the "internets"

I think for me what "sticks" out of all that was intonated from the forgoing posts the feeling that someone was reflecting on the "hungry" musican theme.
What is a hungry musician? Is it some one that believes that a measurement of success in a capitalistic society would be the "proof' of a pot-gold in their possession ?
I believe THAT is the crux of all the discussions on the news pages here at Dmusic.The idea that the size of one's bank account is representative of success seems to be buried in the western psyche.Some are trying to break away from that thinking and will "give" it away ,some "moderates "will only take what they need and then there's the "pure" capitalist - what ,Free?

I do agree with some of the philosophy shared ..."Artists have to understand that 128 is perfectly fine for establishing whether or not a song is fantastic. Artists have to stop shooting themselves in the foot. Besides, a higher bit rate will not make a crappy song sound any better than it actually is. A piece of crap is a piece of crap, even if it has a ribbon on top." very good point .
One thought does come to mind ,some of us and some very successfull artists thrust "is" the quality of the reproduction.So what I'm saying -not all people have the same definition of what comprises "quality " in music.For the author it seems like maybe lyrical content is of greater concern.
...."The presence of 1 or 2 full songs on an artist page should be sufficient to establish an artist in the eyes of the audience. The trend to give away too much music flies in the face of the need to generate CD sales."...
Now that's what I call FOCUS.
So what I want to know ,with the posting of the previuos is someone just trying to engage the wheels of discussion or maybe start some wheels turning to make change at dmusic?

Funny... I had just reread this article a couple days ago. I remember when 1Sound went through this. I stumbled into the site just before it was sabotaged, while I was looking at other OMD models. It's a sad story. It's one thing if a site fails because things just didn't work out, but one admin viciously killing the site...

Dmusic is IMHO an artist colony - would you go enroll at Tanglewood just to say bling? Would you go to Taliesen just to tell everybody you are the world's greatest undiscovered architect? They would make a spandrel or a cement column out of you.

""The presence of 1 or 2 full songs on an artist page should be sufficient to establish an artist in the eyes of the audience"

What if you play five instruments in six different styles, produce, sing, write, master recordings, arrange and perform?

The author of that statement is clearly not a musician. He has no music in his soul.

What is difficult
'for me " in this discussion of How Much Is Enough , is that for an aspiring "artist" such as myself , ONE tune is probably enough -because the rest all sound the same.BUT for the very talented even one good tune will get attention and draw people in.I believe that is why the intent for 1sound was not to be the end all for the artist but a targeted "niche" business model.That would start the wheels of interest churning - in a seemingly undeveloped segment of the online community -sort of a grass roots thing.They picked their target audience and developed for that.
Things that seem to be Overnight success probably really aren't overnight.There does seem to be a habbit of trying to Hit it All instead of taking the monster down on inch at a time.

I hope my band is never limited to just having 1 or 2 songs to represent ourselves with...

Folks would band together and just play each other's songs to elevate their chart position and everyone lost. The best song typically got buried. The site got hit with huge bandwidth bills on the hosting side. The fan would tune into the chart and never return after getting turned off by the chart track quality and assume things would only get worse.....

i could see this happening at sites...while this is a nice music community, and this site is the one i'm most active on of several i belong to, the band pages i have looked at in the rock and metal genres seem to have comments from other dmusic musicians, and less so from the dmusic fans/members. though it seems common to other sites as well, where it seems musicians are basically listening to other musicians, i wonder why that situation occurs?