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Dotcom confirms new name for Megabox D2F project

By Chris Cooke | Published on Monday 9 September 2013

Kim Dotcom’s long-mooted direct-to-fan platform, until recently known as Megabox, will launch as Baboom, the Mega chief has confirmed. And, he says, the new service, which is still a few months off launch as yet, will give artists more “freedom, transparency and control” than ever before. Well, certainly since the last time they used Bandcamp, or whatever their D2F platform of choice is, anyway.

As previously reported, Dotcom announced last week that he had stood down as a Director of Mega, the direct successor to MegaUpload, launched back in January, a year to the day that the US authorities shut down his original file-transfer firm amidst allegations of rampant copyright infringement. Mega said Dotcom needed to free up time to deal with his various legal battles and other projects, which most assumed meant Baboom in particular.

The Mega man confirmed the new name for the direct-to-fan service, which was in development even before the MegaUpload shutdown, to Torrentfreak this weekend, as well as sharing some visuals (pictured) of the new platform. Though he added that the new set-up, currently being worked on by 22 developers, won’t go live until it’s absolutely ready.

He added: “I am really excited about Baboom. I can’t wait for artists to see what I have created for them. Their entire career can be managed on Baboom. Artists never had more freedom, transparency and control”.

It’s thought Baboom will allow artists to set up profiles where they can post music and other content. Dotcom’s company will then sell both advertising to brands and subscriptions to users, passing on a cut of the money to artists, presumably based on how much their content is consumed. It’s not clear whether Baboom will then collate all that content so that it can be consumed via a separate streaming music player, along the lines of what the all-new MySpace is hoping to do.

The concept for Baboom is nowhere near as revolutionary as Dotcom has, at various times, suggested. After all, there are some brilliant direct-to-fan platforms out there already, none of which have led to the demise of the record label (as some, like Dotcom, have previously predicted), with many artists actually collaborating with their record companies on D2F projects.

Still, it will be interesting to see just how Baboom works, especially given ad sales seem to be at its core. And, if nothing else, it’s definitely a contender for ‘worst named digital music platform of all time’. Though the jury’s out on whether Baboom really tops Boinc in that domain.