bop.fm

bop.fm was a music technology startup founded in 2013 by Shehzad Daredia and Stefan Gomez. The San Francisco-based company emerged from the Y Combinator accelerator's Summer 2013 class. The founders' backgrounds were complementary for the venture; Daredia had previous experience in search marketing at KAYAK.com and product management at BillShrink, while Gomez was a software engineer with experience at multiple consumer application startups. This experience informed the company's approach, with Daredia often describing bop.fm as the 'Kayak for music'.

The company's primary service was a music aggregation platform that sought to solve the fragmentation issue within the digital music landscape. The platform aggregated music from various streaming services like Spotify, YouTube, Rdio, SoundCloud, and Deezer, allowing users to create and share playlists seamlessly, regardless of which service their friends used. When a user shared a bop.fm link, the service would intelligently detect which music services the recipient had access to and play the song from the best available source. This model targeted music consumers, but also provided services for music content publishers, artists, and labels by offering detailed analytics on listener habits. The business model was centered on leveraging this aggregated user data for marketing opportunities in the long term.

bop.fm gained significant traction, securing partnerships with major industry players like Billboard, Twitter, and Rap Genius, and growing to over 20 million monthly unique visitors. The startup raised $2 million in seed funding in July 2014 from investors including Charles River Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, SV Angel, and FundersClub. Despite its growth and partnerships, the founders recognized the high costs and risks associated with building a central music destination. In October 2015, bop.fm was acquired by LifeLock, an identity theft protection company, in what is known as an "acquihire." The bop.fm service was shut down following the acquisition, as LifeLock's business had no direct overlap with the music industry.

Keywords: music aggregation, playlist sharing, music streaming platform, Y Combinator alumni, Shehzad Daredia, Stefan Gomez, cross-platform music, digital music, music analytics, music data, acquihire, LifeLock acquisition, Charles River Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, music technology, streaming aggregator, song sharing, universal music link, music discovery, entertainment software