Social.fm, the company formerly known as Mercora, has closed down. The service, which allowed users to stream their music collections to each other, cites no reasons for shutting up shop.
Mercora was announced in 2003 by McAfee founder Srivats Sampath, and we first covered it the following year. Mercora's subscribers were permitted to stream playlists to each other with certain restrictions: Users couldn't announce what they were going to play in advance, request songs from peers or repeat song sequences in a time period, for example.
The company was licensed from the start, however, creating a back-end database, identifying material being played, and paying US internet streaming royalties. Ominously, last year the company ditched the subscription model and adopted a me-too name: Social.fm.
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