Simfy

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Simfy

logo
legal form AG in liquidation
founding 2007
Seat Berlin
management Alexander Herbst (board member)
Number of employees 15 (November 2013)
Branch Music, Internet (music portal)

The Simfy AG was a German online music service could listen, over which one music online. It was also possible to listen to music via desktop applications for Apple macOS and Windows , the Simfy Music Player, as well as for iOS and Android devices. There was no player for Linux , but the possibility of listening to music on the Simfy website. Simfy-Free users could only hear song excerpts with a duration of 30 seconds. The company did not offer an advertising-financed area. With a premium account , music could be heard without restrictions and free of advertising. Simfy also offered an app for Apple iOS , Blackberry OS and Android for its premium users . The audio streams could be accessed at 192 kbit / s .

The songs came from Sony Music and Universal Music as well as other indie labels and smaller record companies. Warner Music withdrew the streaming rights from Simfy in February 2015. There is currently no information about the reasons or duration of this restriction. At times Simfy offered more than 20 million music tracks.

Since 23 August 2010, the simfy.ch address has also been available specifically for users from Switzerland . Simfy officially launched in Austria in March 2011 . Simfy officially launched in Belgium in November 2011 . The company has been in liquidation since the end of April 2015 .

history

The site existed even before the relaunch of the Simfy music portal. Previously, Simfy worked like a search engine, looking for the cheapest music downloads on the Internet. There was a first relaunch in 2008. Now users could upload their music and other users could listen to it, but not download it. In May 2010 the operators started another relaunch of the site with a capital of 7 million euros .

Since the beginning of October 2010 Simfy has also been cooperating with the radio portal Last.fm , so that users had the opportunity to combine the music portfolios of both providers and to save the songs they heard on Simfy in the user profile at last.fm.

In October 2010 it was announced that Simfy with the competitor Steereo merge will. Steereo goes into Simfy. This happens because the negotiations with rights exploiters like GEMA are very time-consuming and costly.

On November 29, 2010 it was announced that Simfy would cooperate with the VZ networks ( meinVZ , schülerVZ , studiVZ ). This cooperation included a schoolchildren and student tariff in which Simfy Premium could be used more cheaply.

From the beginning of 2011 every Simfy user could then use the Simfy player for free. In September 2011, usage was limited to 20 hours / account per month. Advertising in the form of banners and commercials was displayed. Premium users could lift the restrictions. For PremiumPLUS users, in addition to the Simfy player, apps for Apple iOS, Blackberry OS and Android were also available without restrictions. PremiumPlus users could also save playlists offline on mobile devices or the Simfy player. In November 2011, free use was limited to five hours per account and month from the third month of membership.

For its first birthday, Simfy reported over one million registered users and a monthly growth rate in the double-digit percentage range. The company also received an injection of ten million euros in funding.

From May 2, 2012, songs for members of a free account could only be heard for 30 seconds after the second month. There were no restrictions in this regard for the first two months. The monthly limit was still 20 hours in the first two months.

At the end of April 2013, the company headquarters was relocated from Cologne to Berlin. In May 2013 the company announced that it would concentrate on the German market in the future. The total financing should now amount to around 30 million euros.

In July 2013, Gerrit Schumann, the third founder, left the company. Alexander Herbst, who had been the company's Chief Financial Officer (CFO) since 2012, became the new sole CEO. In the months before, Simfy had lost market share to the - mostly international - competition.

On May 1st, 2015 the Simfy offer was changed. According to the website, only a limited number of songs were still available and the offer was de facto discontinued. According to the Federal Gazette, the company has been in liquidation since the end of April 2015.

The Simfy website has also been unavailable since mid-January 2016.

costs

The premium offer without restrictions cost 4.99 euros per month, the PremiumPlus account, which also enables online and offline listening to music via apps, cost 9.99 euros per month. For some time, pre-paid premium accounts were also offered for six or twelve months, which enabled savings of around 5 to 10% compared to the monthly fee. A 12-month premium account amounted to e.g. B. to 49.99 euros per year, which corresponds to 4.17 euros per month.

Web services

Simfy users had the option of linking their Simfy accounts with their Facebook or Twitter profiles in order to recommend songs or albums there. In addition, it was possible to transfer the information about songs that had been heard to Last.fm and to "scrobble" there.

Simfy live

In addition to the streaming offer, Simfy also offered a catalog of concert recordings with simfy live . The concert recordings could be purchased as USB sticks (“Concert Sticks”) and as downloads. The service has now been discontinued.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Claudia Frickel: Free music from the Internet. In: Focus Online . May 3, 2010, accessed September 5, 2010 .
  2. ↑ German music streaming site Simfy improve desktop app. In: Telecom paper. September 28, 2010, accessed December 24, 2010 .
  3. ↑ Henning Steier: In the end, it's usually about the money. In: 20 minutes online. August 20, 2010, accessed on September 14, 2010 (interview with Simfy founders Steffen Wicker and Christoph Lange).
  4. ↑ Stefan Hajek: Warner Music pulls music from Simfy. Retrieved February 24, 2015 .
  5. ↑ 20 million cracked! In: Simfy Blog. November 22, 2012. Retrieved November 24, 2012 .
  6. ↑ Dirk Bösel: Music streaming service Simfy starts in Switzerland. In: MPeX. September 1, 2010, accessed September 14, 2010 .
  7. ↑ Music streaming service also online in Switzerland. (No longer available online.) In: persoenlich.com. August 30, 2010, archived from the original on September 10, 2010 ; Retrieved September 14, 2010 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.persoenlich.com
  8. ↑ Simfy officially starts in Austria. (No longer available online.) March 22, 2011, archived from the original on May 27, 2012 ; Retrieved March 23, 2011 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / futurezone.at
  9. ↑ Simfy is now also available in Belgium. November 7, 2011, accessed November 7, 2011 .
  10. ↑ Gerrit Pohl: Online music: Simfy is looking for the download bargains. In: Spiegel Online . May 26, 2006, accessed December 24, 2010 .
  11. ↑ Music from all friends. In: Stern . February 9, 2008, accessed December 24, 2010 .
  12. ↑ Alexander Hüsing: Seven million euros for simfy. In: german startups. May 12, 2010, accessed December 24, 2010 .
  13. ↑ German music streaming service Simfy partners with Last.fm. In: Telecom paper. October 4, 2010, accessed December 24, 2010 .
  14. ↑ German Internet music platforms: Steereo and Simfy merge. In: Handelsblatt . October 10, 2010, accessed December 24, 2010 .
  15. ↑ Netzwelt-Ticker: Music platforms Steereo and Simfy merge. In: Spiegel Online . October 11, 2010, accessed December 24, 2010 .
  16. ↑ simfy cooperates with VZ networks: listening to music in the community. In: Internet World Business. November 29, 2010, accessed December 24, 2010 .
  17. ↑ simfy limits the free offer to 20 hours. In: Simfy Blog. September 15, 2011, accessed September 19, 2010 .
  18. ↑ Simfy receives ten million euros from investors ( Memento of the original from May 20, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Music market @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.musikmarkt.de
  19. ↑ Simfy focuses on business in Germany. In: Berliner Morgenpost . May 7, 2013, accessed February 5, 2018 .
  20. ↑ a b Cynthia Verena Castritius: Simfy's Chief Financial Officer becomes the new CEO. In: gruenderszene.de. February 5, 2018, accessed February 5, 2018 .
  21. ↑ hello.simfy.de ( memento of the original from April 30, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / hello.simfy.de
  22. ↑ Federal Gazette, quick search
  23. ↑ Konrad Lischka: Spot on for free streaming. In: Spiegel Online . March 12, 2012, accessed February 5, 2018 .