me*dia*or

Beyond Oblivian has sung its last song before launching its first product, an usual music service dubbed “bionic”. Funded by News Corp, The Wellcome Foundation and media investment bank Allen & Co, the company burned through $87 million since opening in 2008. Founder Adam Kidron blamed demands for advances to labels and publishers for the failure.

Beyond Oblivian touted “bionic”, as a cloud based music service supported by device manufacturers paying a one-time life-of-device fee alongside micro-royalty per play payments whether the original file had been downloaded legally or illegally.

Kidron confirmed that the Beyond Oblivion was closing in a statement that blamed the company’s failure on the difficulty of “co-ordinating the diversity of the ecosystem” which includes artists, labels, publishers and device manufacturers”.

“Beyond was always a tremendously grand ambition as the advances required by the record labels and music publishers were substantial, reflecting the breadth of the rights required to create a true digital music one-stop,” said Kidron, who ended with: “Until victory always.”