Audioload.com

Audioload.com was Singapore-based online music portal servicing the Asian music scene. It operated from May 1998 and closed down on December 18 [ [http://web.archive.org/web/20010224192845/www.audioload.com/ Wayback machine - Audioload.com shutdown notice] ] , 2000, around the time the dot-com bubble burst. Napster (and other free file sharing tools) was another catalyst that threw the early legal music download business model into chaos making free music downloads the norm amongst consumers.

History

People

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At a later stage, Jyh Herng dropped out due to family commitments. A new member, Elvin Tan (a drummer with a band at that point), was also introduced by Eng Wah.

Hires

The company eventually hired a permanent employee to take care of public relations activities which led to its first press conference as a small cybercafe at the Stamford Road area to announce the official launch of its new website in 2000.

Several contract employees were also occasionally used for the data entry of artiste or CD album information into the database.

tart-up Days

The group met regularly at the Bedok McDonalds to trash out ideas and discuss business models and strategy. Initial ideas ranged from selling books and online bookmarks.

The group finally decided to focus on music as it was still a new market online at that time, and the founders also shared the interest.

The initial set of musicians and content on the site was acquired by purchasing demo tapes from Dada Records at Funan Centre. Calls were made directly the artistes for permission to digitally encode the tracks for streaming and also for putting their in-tape notes on the website.

Elvin only joined the company at this stage and his direct involvement and contacts within the music industry was a crucial element to the success of the site for collaborations with music labels and content acquisition.

Names

The initial website was called Amplified and was hosted at www.amplified.com.sg. However, due to the confusion many people had with another music portal at www.amplified.com, the team decided that they needed to have a .com domain.

The second name selected was AudioTRIP. This too was eventually dropped after 9 months after the team decided to go for a more professional sounding name which would appeal to more mature audiences and also potential investors.

The team finally decided on Audioload.com in late 1999 in order to provide a more general name that would provide a platform for the legal downloading of any type of audio, not just music. The term "Audioload" was meant to be used as a verb to denote the legal downloading of audio - hence the tag-line "Audioload your music today".

The .com in Audioload.com was officially part of the name and also in the company registration to fully reflect the pure online nature of the business. Amplified and AudioTRIP were previously registered under a previous company that was called "Big Bang Theory Internet Systems" - this name was chosen after someone in the team mentioned that the name should give the WOW impression, like a Big Bang.

Investors

The company's sole external investor was chinadotcom who bought a 15% stake for an undisclosed sum in January 2000. The rest of the funding was provided directly by the founders.

Premises

The company was located around the Bugis area in downtown Singapore within the office of another Internet company, Pandora Interactive Studio.

Organising Events

From early on, the company became involved in local music events at several locations in the city which were friendly to promoting home-grown music, like Moods, The Substation and Venom. The website became a meeting point for organisers to locate bands to perform. The company later started sourcing and recommending bands for the various performances.

A regular monthly event that was co-sponsored with the National Youth Council was WeekendTRIP @ The Youthpark which drew several hundred young people each month. It was organised on the first Saturday of each month.

Technology

Hardware

All the hardware that was used for running the websites and databases were acquired directly from Sim Lim Square. This allowed the team to keep expenses low and purchase only the hardware components needed for the optimal website operation.

The CPUs in use were then top of the line Pentium II processors running at 800 MHz from Intel.

Operating System

*Web and Database servers running on Red Hat Linux versions 6 and 7.
*Media streaming server running on Windows 2000 Server Edition.

Database

Audioload was one of the first start-ups in Singapore to run Oracle 8i running on Linux. The company partnered with Oracle Corporation for the implementation in order to showcase the speed and capability of the database in running a web site.

Prior to using Oracle, a lightweight database called Mini SQL was utilised.

ripting Language

The website was completely written in PHP 3 and later PHP 4.

When Mini SQL was initially in use, the native scripting language, Lite, was used. This was for the development of the Amplified and AudioTRIP websites. When Audioload.com was completely re-designed and re-written using Oracle as the database, PHP was then chosen for its scalability and native support of the database.

Notable Artistes on the Site

*Concave Scream
*Electico (formerly known as Electric Company)
*Gently Fall
*Sherene's Closet

Press Mentions

*On June 15, 2000, Audioload.com announced that it had secured the rights to digitize, convert and adapt albums from PonyCanyon Music for use on the site. [ [http://www.prweb.com/releases/2000/6/prweb15601.htm AudioLoad.com secures PonyCanyon Music Catalog] ]

Related

* [http://www.audioreload.com Audioreload] - Shortly after Audioload.com was closed, another website Audioreload was started by a group of local music enthusiasts. It focuses on the Singapore music scene and continues to be a gathering point for aspiring musicians.
* Asiamix - Competitor, based in Hong Kong.
* e-Dedicate - Competitor, based in Singapore. Focused on providing online music dedication services.
* [http://www.soundbuzz.com Soundbuzz] - Competitor, based in Singapore and still operating.

Footnotes