Music Web site Buzznet expands online portfolio

By Antony Bruno

DENVER (Billboard) - Not content to let MySpace, iLike and Facebook take all the online music thunder, Buzznet is roaring into the Music 2.0 market with a vengeance.

In the last few weeks the company has acquired music-focused blogs Stereogum and Idolator, and brought on Universal Music Group as a content partner and equity holder. Additional moves are expected in the weeks to come.

According to GM of music Scott Boyd, this flurry of activity is all focused on a single goal: create an online music destination for the fan, by the fan and of the fan.

"There's a void out there," he says. "You see music fans jumping from site to site to piece all the information they want together . . . Our goal is to put that all together into one place and have an experience that is largely programmed by the users of the community. Not just user-generated content, but really creating the whole experience."

That goal stems from the service's roots as a site to upload camera-phone pictures. Users would post and comment on photos that were from concerts that members attended. Buzznet soon evolved into a very music-focused site and began enlisting artists to create their own profiles and tour blogs. For the past three years, it has served as the official online community for the Coachella music festival and has created similar services for the Vans Warped tour.

Just don't call it a social network. The company prefers "social media site." It combines social networking components like member profiles and "friend" lists with a growing roster of content that members can organize however they like.

Boyd says the newly acquired blogs will remain as stand-alone entities, but will integrate posts from each into the main Buzznet site in order to provide context around individual artist searches and profiles.

"So if you're looking into a particular band, there's a review from Stereogum and a news story from Idolator and there's a photo gallery created by a kid who was at the concert last night," Boyd says. "We can add value by bringing that content into our bigger community and spreading it around."

Buzznet's deal with Universal Music adds full-song streaming and music video to that mix of spreadable content. And expect more soon. The company won't comment on it, but Buzznet is believed to be the recipient of $25 million in recent venture funding. During the course of last year, it also brought on a stable of Internet veterans that includes Boyd, who joined last October from AOL Music, as well as several former Yahoo sales executives, and named former Feedster president Tyler Goldman CEO.

It's also been aggressive in reaching out to artists, many of whom host contests on the network, particularly those requiring some sort of media sharing. Avril Lavigne, for instance, launched a model search for her clothing line via the site, while 30 Seconds to Mars invited fans to upload pro-environmental videos and make donations to environmental charities.

It's this kind of hands-on programming and production that Buzznet hopes will set itself apart from the MySpaces of the world.

"I don't think it's that interesting to just do an audio streaming service," Boyd says. "That's incredibly important, but our users want the editorial around that. They want to create their own programming around that. So that's just one part of the piece, not the end-all, be-all."

Despite the recent activity, Boyd says the company now offers only 50% of what it ultimately hopes to make available, in terms of services and content. Some of the remaining 50% will come from internal work needed to integrate its recent acquisitions, but expect more label deals and possible acquisitions in the near future.

"The overall strategy is having the best and deepest experience," Boyd says. "If other sites offer that from an editorial or product end, we'd absolutely consider it."

Reuters/Billboard