Earbits

Earbits is a commercial-free music streaming service & music marketing platform that was founded in 2010.^[1] The streaming service is available to consumers as a website in addition to clients for the iPhone, iPod Touch & Android mobile devices.^[2] The music marketing platform is available to independent artists, labels and concert promoters who can bid for their songs to be played.^[3] Earbits currently has 550 labels, 10,000 artists and 100,000 songs in its library.^[4]

Earbits graduated from the startup accelerator program Y Combinator as part of the Winter 2011 class^[5] and has received a total of 895k dollars in funding from Charles River Ventures, Geoff Ralston, Matt Mullenweg, Start Fund and private investors.^[4][6]

In early 2013 Earbits launched their own virtual currency that allows consumers to earn on-demand access to streaming music by taking actions that benefit artists, such as joining a band's official fan page or mailing list.^[7] Unlike Spotify and other on-demand music streaming services, Earbits uses Groovies as their currency to unlock on-demand features instead of having to pay real money for it.

Earbits has been called the "new breed of artist-focused Internet radio"^[6] in times in which the online music business is hardly profitable.^[8]

Earlier, Earbits announced that they had been shutting down their service after operating for over 4 years, on 16 June 2014, with the reason being stated as lack of capital funding to compete in the market.^[9] They have since reported to have received funding from one of their strategic partners enabling them to continue their online services for an indefinite period.^[10]

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