Audiogalaxy R.I.P.
“Our whole direction as a company was not to merely provide file sharing services; we wanted to have a community of music afficianados actively seeking out new music. As I mentioned above, I bought a TON of CDs while I worked at AG, and virtually all of them were from music I found out about and previewed as an mp3. It was amazing to be talking to someone about their favorite band that you saw listed on their profile page, queue it to your satellite, and by the end of the conversation already be listening to that music. For several bands that are now some of my favorites, I went from never having heard of them to loving them in literally 5 minutes. From discussions I’ve had with many of my friends, they had similar experiences. The whole system made it easy to find new music; that was what it was designed to do, and at its height it did it brilliantly.”
Kennon Ballou, formerly a programmer at Audiogalaxy, writes about the job, the company, the implications.