Usina do Som

» see usinadosom.com.br as it lived, on the wayback machine

~ the obit ~

Usina do Som went on the air on Sunday 19 March 2000, and the party was held two days later. The name means something like sound plant. It belonged to Grupo Abril, the São Paulo publisher of Veja, and Folha de S.Paulo put the investment at 16 million reais for a project that had been in development since October 1999. The staff numbered 23, many of them moved over from the newsroom of Abril's music magazine Showbizz. The streams ran on Microsoft's Windows Media, and Folha quoted the offer in one line: "Tudo no site é de graça." Everything on the site is free.

I was sixteen that March, on a dial-up modem in Turkey, where any music stream stuttered and a Portuguese one had no reason to reach me. Usina do Som was written in Portuguese for listeners in Brazil, and the press that followed it was Brazilian as well.

Abril suspended the operation on 31 December 2004. The notice gave no return date and blamed the cost of the technology. The Wayback Machine's last working capture of the home page was taken at 22:46 Brasília time that same night, and it shows the usual front page with no word about closing.

~ the rap sheet ~

~ 115,000 stations in three weeks ~

The launch catalog held 30,000 songs and 19 stations programmed by the staff. The feature people came for was the personal station, put together by the listener out of the same catalog. On 14 April 2000 Folha counted more than 115,000 of them after three weeks. The site had 1.3 million registered users in September 2001, the year it took six iBest awards. In July 2002 the figures were 2.2 million users and about 4 million personalized stations. The help pages of 2004 claimed more than 170,000 songs and over 200 programmed stations.

~ Ecad would not take the money ~

The record industry answered within the year. Folha reported on 15 November 2000 that ABPD, the association of Brazilian record labels, had sued the site. Director Tercio Pacitti said Usina do Som had tried to pay for the rights, and that Ecad, the national collecting office, "não aceita receber", would not accept the payment. No licensing deal with the labels turns up in the press of the following years.

Free lasted until July 2003. Folha wrote on the 16th that the site "agora é pago", is now paid, with a monthly subscription of up to 5.90 reais. By September the cheapest plan was 4.99 a month, and the site's own help page offered a seven-day trial before charging.

~ bye bye, in four GIFs ~

The farewell page was titled ":: Bye Bye - Usina do Som ::". Its sentences were drawn into four GIF images instead of being typed, which is how the archive still holds them. The first reads: "Informamos que a operação dessa empresa foi suspensa em 31/12/2004, sem previsão de retorno." The second paragraph says the advanced technology behind the service "demanda fortes investimentos, que, no momento, ficam inviabilizados". A support address stayed open until 28 February 2005, and the page was signed by the teams of Usina do Som and Editora Abril.

The archive shows a 404 on 2 January 2005 and the farewell from 4 January. From April the address forwarded to a page on abril.com.br carrying a shorter notice, which last answered in November 2006. Observatório da Imprensa later listed the site beside the Abril Music label among the ventures the group had closed. The domain was registered again on 10 December 2013 by a car audio shop that happens to share the name.

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