Popcuts
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
Some sections are still being researched1 / 4
Sections to complete：05
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
Popcuts was an online music store born as a UC Berkeley master's project by Kevin Mateo Lim, Hannes Hesse and Yiming Liu, and part of Y Combinator's Summer 2008 batch. It sold DRM-free songs for 99 cents with a twist: every time a song you bought sold again, you earned a cut of the proceeds, with earlier buyers earning more - making every fan a co-owner of the songs they loved.
02 / Popcuts FAILURE REASONS
Failure reasons
Popcuts shut down because its economics never worked. Margins on 99-cent downloads were tiny, and grew even smaller when part of each sale funded rewards for previous buyers, making a profitable download store nearly impossible. It was also hard to convince the labels and distributors who control music rights to come on board, and the team admitted it had not pushed hard enough to win them over.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Founded
Popcuts originated as a UC Berkeley School of Information master's project and joined Y Combinator's Summer 2008 batch; it won Best Online Music Startup at SXSW Interactive.
- Shut down
After more than three years, the team announced the shutdown of the Popcuts music store in March 2012; users could spend remaining balances until March 31, after which the lights went off.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN / AFTERMATH
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.