Vitaminic

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

~ the obit ~

vitaminic's peak years line up almost exactly with my mp3 years, and that is precisely why i never touched it. between 2002 and 2005 i was downloading music in internet cafes in turkey, off the free file-sharing that everyone my age used, on 56k at home and something faster at the counter. vitaminic was trying to sell what i was getting for nothing. it was aimed at a europe that would pay for a clean legal download, and that europe was not the one i was living in.

the company started in turin around 1999, one of the earliest serious attempts to make an online music storefront on the continent. artists uploaded their tracks, listeners bought or streamed them, and after an italian stock market listing in 2000 vitaminic used the money to buy its way across the map. it took over peoplesound in the uk and iuma in the us, stitching together a catalog that spanned several countries before most people had a reason to buy a single song online.

the timing was the problem. the market it wanted was still forming, and by the time buyers were ready itunes had defined how legal downloads would work, and it was not vitaminic. buongiorno merged with the company in 2003 and kept the brand going for years as a mobile-content and catalog business, but the pioneering storefront idea had been overtaken. italian coverage of the final shutdown around 2012 pinned much of the blame on the free social web, facebook above all, pulling attention away from paying for music at all.

~ the rap sheet ~

~ the cracks ~

vitaminic was early in the way that gets you killed rather than crowned. it bet that people would pay for downloads before the habit existed, and it built the infrastructure and the catalog to be ready. being ready first is expensive, and someone else usually walks through the door you propped open. apple did. by the time the paying customer showed up, the storefront waiting for them had a fruit logo, not a vitamin one.

~ the long tail ~

what got buried with vitaminic was the idea of a homegrown european digital music giant. the pieces it collected, peoplesound and iuma among them, are graves now too. the continent ended up renting its music future from american platforms instead of growing its own, and vitaminic is the clearest early marker of the attempt that did not make it.

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