Orfium could be the new Soundcloud
Orfium is a brand new music discovery platform which has literally just gone live in the last 48 hours.
First impressions of Orfium are that it looks quite similar in functionality to Soundcloud but from what they had to say to Magnetic Magazine, the founders have a few of their own tricks up their sleeve. The most notable of these that will no doubt excite potential users/members is that content providers (selling of your own music via the platform) will receive a massive 80% of the revenue earned.
Now it is true that 80% of nothing will still be nothing so the potential to earn via this platform will really depend on how quick the uptake is from the online music listening/streaming community. But the gap in the market is there for Orfium to take since Soundcloud has fallen from grace somewhat, with artists even having their own compositions removed from the platform with royalty issues.
But to be fair to Soundcloud they did announce that DJ mixes would not be blocked and recently Twitter did invest $ 70 million in the platform who declared a loss of $44 million recently .
What Orfium has to say
Magnetic Magazine interviewed the founders, Chris Mohoney and Drew Delis of Orfium. You can read the full interview here.
We’ve highlighted a few of the things they said that piqued our interest…
Magnetic have likened Orfium to having the potential to do to Soundcloud what Facebook did to MySpace; lofty expectations indeed.
Here are some highlights on what the founders had to say:
- They have extensive experience with YouTube rights management and also with licensing and saw an opportunity to apply a similar approach with Orfium.
- Their aim says Drew is for Orfium to be a single platform where one can find music ranging from top-level to amateur and therefore accommodates everybody’s needs.
- The objective is to have a platform that offers both a strong business-to-business component for artists but also a promotional side for consumers.
- Currently Orfium has 70,000 tracks from approximately 22,000 artists.
- The say their search algorithm is more sophisticated than what’s currently available which aides music discovery.
Someone could search for a track on our site, choose a mood and a category, vocal, or instrument, and it’s powerful enough to find the tracks that have that and bring them up in a fraction of a second.”
- When uploading an original track you are presented with different ways you could generate revenue from the music. Orfium, they say, will assist in simplifying this so that producers can do what they do best; produce music and not hassle too much about the business stuff.
The interview is quite in-depth but it certainly worth a read. We’ve just skimmed the surface with some of the main points they made.
Or simply sign up with Orfium and try it out by loading a mix or a track.