Music Portal Riffage.com Has Left The Building.(Company Business and Marketing)
Newsbytes News Network, Dec 10, 2000, by Dick Kelsey

Riffage.com is the latest music site to be silenced by a flat online marketplace and the sharp edge of legal uncertainties.

“Pioneers enjoy the thrills of new frontiers, but must also deal with the risks inherent in uncharted territories,” says a message posted on the Riffage home page. “Having reached out to a million fans and tens of thousands of bands, we cannot continue to service these fine communities in the current economic marketplace.”

Operations ceased on Friday.

Riffage’s Great American Music Hall and 1500 Records, which the company purchased last summer, will be sold to new owners, the statement said.

High-tech’s fall from grace on Wall Street, coupled with the Napster lawsuit and other legal battles, have created an especially difficult environment for music sites.

“The funding environment is very difficult right now,” said Sean Ryan, COO of Listen.com, in a speech at a digital music conference in September. “VCs (venture capitalists) are not funding because of the uncertainty of the legal issues facing many companies.” He predicted that one digital media company would go under each week for the next 12 to 18 months.

Riffage joins file-sharing site Scour, Webcasting pioneer Pseudo.com, indy label online distributor SpinRecords and other such sites on the failure list.

Reported by Newsbytes.com, http://www.newsbytes.com

23:42 CST

(20001210/WIRES ONLINE, LEGAL, BUSINESS/)

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COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group

Original Date: 2000-12-10
Original URL:
http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m0NEW/2000_Dec_10/67876011/p1/article.jhtml