> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.hypebot.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# Digital Music Startup Beyond Oblivion Burns Through $87M, Crashes Before Launch
- URL: https://www.hypebot.com/digital-music-startup-beyond-oblivian-burns-through-87m-crashes-before-launch/
- Published: 2012-01-02T07:20:00.000Z
- Updated: 2012-01-02T07:20:00.000Z
- Description: (UPDATE 3) Beyond Oblivion has sung its last song before launching its first product, a music service dubbed "boinc". Funded by News Corp, The Wellcome Foundation and media investment bank. Continue reading [https://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2012/01/digital-music-startup-beyond-oblivian-burns-through-
- Author: Bruce Houghton
- Tags: Streaming, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2026-01-21 10:55

[![image from www.google.com](http://hypebot.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451b36c69e201675fb5cebe970b-200wi "image from www.google.com")](http://hypebot.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451b36c69e201675fb5cebe970b-popup?ref=hypebot.com)

(UPDATE 3) **Beyond Oblivion** has sung its last song before launching its first product, a music service dubbed "boinc". Funded by **News Corp**, The Wellcome Foundation and media investment bank Allen & Co, the company burned through **$87 million** since opening in 2008\. Founder Adam Kidron blamed demands for advances to labels and publishers for the failure.

  
Beyond Oblivion touted "boinc", as a cloud based music service supported by device manufacturers paying a one-time life-of-device fee alongside micro-royalty per play payments whether the original file had been downloaded legally or illegally.

Kidron confirmed that the Beyond Oblivion was closing in a [statement](http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/32af873c-3335-11e1-8e0d-00144feabdc0.html?ftcamp=rss&ref=hypebot.com#axzz1i6cd9Zes) that blamed the company's failure on the difficulty of “co-ordinating the diversity of the ecosystem” which includes artists, labels, publishers and device manufacturers".

“Beyond was always a tremendously grand ambition as the advances required by the record labels and music publishers were substantial, reflecting the breadth of the rights required to create a true digital music one-stop,” said Kidron, who ended with: “Until victory always.”

**UPDATE**: Under the banner "You can't make this stuff up", [Dalton Caldwell](http://daltoncaldwell.tumblr.com/?ref=hypebot.com) points to this now ironic Gaurdian piece on Beyond Oblivian from March 2011:

> *Beyond Oblivion, the online music marketplace partly owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, has secured *$77m (£47m) in additional investment* ahead of its worldwide launch later this year.*  
>  
> *“The fledgling company plans to unveil its “liberated music” marketplace in September. *Negotiations with the four major record labels* – Universal, Warner Music, Sony and EMI – are at a *“very advanced stage”,* according to the Beyond Oblivion founder and chief executive, Adam Kidron…*  
>  
> ***“We’re going to launch with $500m revenue guarantees, and we pay a large proportion of that – between 70% and 90% – back to content owners.***  
>  
> *The News Corp chief digital officer, Jon Miller, added: “Our additional investment in this business serves as *an endorsement of the progress that Beyond Oblivion has made* in bringing this innovative new music product to market.”*

Note: A previous verison of this story had misnamed the defunct service as bionic. It was to be called "boinc".