A hundred million might seem like a large VC investment – but not when it’s made in Icelandic kronur (£449,363). That’s what Reykjavik-based Gogoyoko has got from Iceland’s The New Venture Business Fund and private investor Vilhjalmur Thorsteinsson, ArcticStartup reports. Gogoyoko, the spiel goes, is a social music marketplace that lets artists create profiles to connect with fans and sell online music through a store, keeping 100 percent of revenue; there’s a music player, editable themes and a live dates section.
Whilst it’s impressive that anyone in the crippled Icelandic economy is investing right now, frankly we’ve heard all of this before – only yesterday, an identical-sounding site in Germany got funded. There are only so many social music platforms that labels’ artist marketing teams have time to populate. A little site called MySpace is already predominant in the space; if their ilk continues to proliferate, there is likely to be blood on the social music floor, with some under-used platforms going to the wall.
Far better to stay local or recast the idea as a white-label platform for artists’ own sites, which are still the top destination for info-seeking fans – 68 percent of fans go to artist sites, the top destination for information, against 51 percent even for MySpace profiles, according to research presented at MidemNet this year. At least PeoplesMusicStore brings a slightly different approach to the segment, letting users curate the site. Still, plucky Gogoyoko, which had also given an equity stake to Norwegian new media consultancy Ignitas, plans to market itself internationally this year. Currently its team resides in Germany, Norway, India and Iceland.