Kim Dotcom's new music streaming service

[jnardiello]

Kim Dotcom is an evil genius and a remarkable marketing guy. During his whole career no doubts he made a fortune out of other people work BUT, still, he can't be considered responsible for it because - in fact - he had MILLIONS of users who actually used the pirated content megaupload made available (and i dare anyone here to throw the first stone if they never used megaupload). So, while i'm not yet sure i like the guy, i still consider the megaupload affair a huge mistake.

What is astonishing anyway is what he made out of the whole situation. No doubt most of the people out there would have been simply destroyed by events. Not only he wasn't, but he managed to launch two different businesses that still surely has a lot to show in the future.

Regarding this specific music project, i can only say that i agree with him. Paying for the music you like IS the new model , so far he looks like one of the few who understood it (together with Spotify, which is in fact doing the same).

PS: I really like the album he made available for free.

[zwdr]

Kimble is a fraud and an asshole. The only things he's good at are marketing and scamming. Just take a look at his history- insider trading, selling userdata from a BBS he ran to a lawyer, scamming the german telcos... the list is quite long.

He's a good marketer, but one of the worst people I've read about. There's a file of his quotes (from the CCC mailing list) circulating, if you know german you should try reading that. Really gives some insight into him. For example how that l33t hacker cred he has is all for show– I wouldn't buy anything about free speech from him either. He's only interested in money. I remember one quote from one of his teachers about how Kimble was the most antisocial kid he ever teached LOL.

TLDR: You really shouldnt like the guy, read a bit about him and you'll figure out why.

EDIT: Here's the quote file: http://babsi.de/KIMBLE.txt

[smoyer]

I never used megaupload ... but casting the first stone is always dangerous.

[rangibaby]

I have an iTunes library of a million bajillion tracks, a habit I picked up back in the 00s when downloading an entire album (or every album!) of an artist you liked was a novel thing and turned everyone into the digital equivalent of hoarders.

And guess what? I pretty much listen to none of it anymore. My daily music dose now comes from Soundcloud, where active artists are putting up new tracks / mixes and giving the equivalent of Facebook likes to tracks that they personally enjoyed. It is a fun way of listening to music, and I often go and buy tracks on iTunes even if they are already free to download (which is the case a lot of the time).

This site has me really excited. The player is slick, the presentation is cool. Kim Dotcom's album itself is competently generic club music, which is more than can be said for a lot of club music.

Exciting!

[gress]

I'm curious - do you ever use genius to 'rediscover' music from your old collection, or is it just plain better to have a broader range available?

I personally do a little of both - using either my own collection, or pandora and now iTunes Radio. I find myself using iTunes Radio more and more vs my own collection.

[staticelf]

Wow, never thought it would be such hate on HN against kim.com?

I think he seems to really fight for internet freedom in more ways than the angry commentators in this thread probably will ever do.

Who cares if he had a dark past. He's already been to jail for one crime in my knowledge and I think he really deserves his money.

It seems you're gonna buy the songs you want to listen to directly from artists with this new service. It can't be anything like pirating? He is really pushing it forward and completes his products with the touch of quality.

[brazzy]

The only thing he has ever fought for is his own bank account. He doesn't have a "dark past", but an ongoing history of scamming. You can be assured that he will find the optimal way to scam both you and the artists out of as much money as possible.

[forrestthewoods]

Fuck Kim Dotcom. He's a scumbag piece of shit who deserves to rot in prison. He plots and schemes way to put hundreds of millions of dollars into his pocket off of the works of others. Anyone who supports him should be ashamed of themselves.

[JoshGlazebrook]

> He plots and schemes way to put hundreds of millions of dollars into his pocket off of the works of others.

And the way the recording industry works is any different?

[watwut]

Generally speaking, people should be put in prison only if the prosecution can legally prove they did something illegal. "I totally know he is a scumbag" cause "some unrelated stuff that was totally shade" is not considered proof.

Shady acts on the side of FBI, police and other government agencies are way more dangerous for democracy and rule of law then whatever Kim Dotcom did.

The same goes for criminalization of copyright law, whether by precedent or brought law changes.

[pantaril]

"Fuck Kim Dotcom. He's a scumbag piece of shit who deserves to rot in prison. He plots and schemes way to put hundreds of millions of dollars into his pocket off of the works of others. Anyone who supports him should be ashamed of themselves."

Fuck YOU and current copyright. By running megaupload/mega Kim Dotcom did nothing wrong. He created service for sharing information, that is a good thing. The artificial limitations copyright imposes on usage of our technologies is retarded.

[thisiswrong]

> Fuck Kim Dotcom. He's a scumbag piece of shit

Really? Perhaps you work for the corrupt dinosaurs at the MAFIAA or those in the UK/US government? Or perhaps you were easily fooled by the lies fed to you by mainstream media?

Either way, people on HN should remember that Kim Dotcom is one of the few successful .com businessmen to fight against Hollywood & the NSA in the name of internet freedom and privacy rights. Whatever you think of him, remember that the enemy of your enemy is always your friend.

[yapcguy]

> He plots and schemes way to put hundreds of millions of dollars into his pocket off of the works of others.

Ok, if you have a problem with share-cropping then you should start with Zuckerburg and all the other social networks, not to mention Ariana Huffington who conned bloggers and writers to work for free...

[r4pha]

Don't hate the player. Hate the game.

[Dogamondo]

A troll just got 50 internet points on HN. Congratulations.

[rfnslyr]

If this is how you feel about the world, how do you live? Do you simply just not use services you feel have been corrupt? If that's the case the only place you should really be located is the woods without internet.

[mrkmcknz]

Say what you want about Kim Dotcom, the guy is a marketing genius.

Before Megaupload he was virtually unknown out of tech/finance circles. Now my mother knows who he is. Albeit, she calls him Dotcom Internet.

[jagermo]

No, he was not. He was, among other things, known as a fellon in a pump and dump scheme around letsbuyit.com. http://attrition.org/errata/charlatan/kimble/

[spindritf]

You gotta admire the guy's drive. Relentless.

The player is also quite slick. No flash, and very responsive.

[yapcguy]

The video background on the homepage packs quite the punch, really draws you in - for a minute I thought it might be some kind of WebGL.

[icebraining]

Apparently they're Portuguese! Congratulations, we sure need more startups around here :)

[pmcpinto]

Yes we do.I also didn't know that they were portuguese

[nForce]

I like the site. Can anyone give a technical synopsis of how this has been made, perhaps the time frame and complexity of an app like this?

I'm assuming Kim hasn't coded this himself, anyone know if he outsourced to a company?

[pbhjpbhj]

The Baboom developers page links to 2 open-source projects. One of the web pages, for Mout (https://github.com/mout/mout), is © linking to http://www.millermedeiros.com/ so presumably he's one of the devs.

Satazor is listed as a dev on Mout and also on the other OS project on the Baboom site, Bower (http://bower.io/).

If you really want to know ... http://instagram.com/p/iGuGNvLpwK shows pics none of which are Kimdotcom AFAICT.

[Geee]

There's details about the company behind it: http://baboom.com/developers/ although no word about who works there.

The design and implementation of the site are excellent, it's a shame that the discussion here focused on Kim. There's obviously very brilliant and passionate people behind the site. Possibly the same team that works on Mega.

[dk8996]

Yeah that would be something. It really looks in the style of Goolge Music probably heavy with HTML5 and css. Doesn't look like there is flash.

[xzel]

I'm not sure if anyone actually listened to his album but the production on it is pretty solid. I would love to know who made most of this. It sounds like all the pop EDM garbage thats out there right now. A lot of the lyrical content is totally in that realm of meaningless phrases about life and partying. Songs like Keep Getting Better could have me fooled that it was a Rihanna song (really both of the girls Amari and Ilati sounded autotuned like her).

[davej]

The demo site works well and feels slick. It's a pity I had to listen to his music to try it out though.

Auto-tune is a cool technology but I liked it better when tone-deaf rich people couldn't flatly sing a poorly-written, over-produced song and call it music.

[doubt_me]

Did he really just make an entire service just to not have a myspace page?

[Geee]

It's also the release of Kim Dotcom's debut album 'Good Times', and also his 40th birthday! :)

[deletes]

I assume he made a deal with the artists and we are not downloading illegally?

Nice design, btw the animation is maxing out my gpu.

[dangrossman]

There's nothing on the site to download other than his own album in the preview. His video implies he wants artists to upload their music for free, and fans only pay if they enjoy the work. The download tab for an album in the preview has links to iTunes, Amazon and Bandcamp.

[antoinec]

I might have missed something (if so please tell me), but the only mention of Kim Dotcom is "Check the first album ever released on Baboom, Good Times by Kim Dotcom", and it's saying what it's saying... and not that Kim Dotcom is actually behind the service.

[citricsquid]

    We are associated with the same group behind MEGA 
    (Megaupload successor as Wikipedia states), and 
    responsible for the upcoming music service BABOOM.

From their recruitment document

[lowglow]

It's like a new myspace.

[RDeckard]

Kim Dotcom is a maverick.

[toblender]

Wow, Kim's album is actually pretty catchy...

[mpg33]

I used Rdio for a few months this it seems like this streaming music business model is the going to be the future..

[primitivesuave]

Personality-wise, he's kind of like the alter-ego of Steve Wozniak.

[elwell]

ha interesting...

[elwell]

The site, including the careers page, is beautiful.

[ing33k]

he can also sing ? wow

[jagermo]

just like Silvio Berlusconi. And probably one of the Kim-Clan in northern Korea.

[yxhuvud]

With autotune, everyone can sing.