It’s starting to look like the only financially feasible way of indulging in a merry-go-round of music-playing is to literally hijack a merry-go-round, disconnect the automatic carousel organ, and invite friends and acquaintances alike to bob on mutant animals to sounds recently deemed “happening” by the roundabout DJ of the moment. The seminal Turntable.fm shuttered a couple of years ago to the expressed serious disappointment of our own Jared Micah (and for reasons that reportedly stemmed from the company’s inability to actually pay artists and survive), and now, a clever and marginally well-received follow-up named plug.dj has shuttered due to financial difficulties. Apparently, the circumvention of royalty-doling-out by requiring users to play songs uploaded to YouTube or SoundCloud still wasn’t enough to keep things in the black…
Sadly, a last-ditch call for donations didn’t do the job either. That was made in a blog post on September 14, and two weeks later, the plug.dj team expressed their appreciation and bid their farewell via identical medium:
In 2012, we set out to make a product for music fans that we knew people would love to connect through. Since its birth, plug.dj has grown into a community of millions that have been on the forefront of musical discovery, with 20,000 new users trying out the service every day. We can’t begin to explain how much fun we’ve had on this adventure with everyone. We’ve made new friends with a worldwide audience, we’ve been introduced to genres we didn’t even know existed, and we’ve wooted more songs than we can count, but sadly it’s time to say goodbye.
Unfortunately, we didn’t get enough support through our subscribers to keep the site running month to month. We’re truly thankful for the donations we received that helped keep the site up until now. If it wasn’t for you, the site would have shut down 3 weeks ago. For the people who are currently subscribed, all active subscriptions will be cancelled today. At 3PM PDT we’ll be shutting our doors.
Thanks again for plugging in. It was a wild party!
Here’s a song I’ve chosen to fit the moment:
• plug.dj: http://blog.plug.dj
