The Snowman Corporation[]
A Music Media Share company.
Snowman is a provider of on-demand Internet streaming music media available to viewers in all of North America, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, South America and parts of Europe. The company was established in 2005 as a subscription based service and music retailer. The name of the company reflects the user interface, accessible online or through phone app; the program is a music streaming application that features a graphic (reminiscent of Farmville) interface wherein the user's avatar is a child chibi coming out to play in a snow-covered front lawn.
When the user first sets up their account, they are prompted to 'build a snowman' by searching for a number of favorite songs from the streaming library, which the program will then create a playlist and a channel of new songs based upon their selections. Users can build multiple snowmen to represent different channels, each with its own style and theme. There is a social aspect to the app wherein users can interact with other users they've friended; the graphic interface represents this by showing the child chibi travelling to a friend's yard. Once there, they can listen to their friends' channels by looking at their friends' Snowmen, or they can suggest songs directly to friends by 'tagging' their friend with a snowball. One of the aspects that sets Snowman apart is that, every month, subscribers can direct-download a set number of songs from the service for permanent ownership, all paid for through their subscription dues.
Snowman is headquartered in Los Gatos, California. By 2007, Snowman was offering a collection of over 29,000 artists and had surpassed 7 million subscribers.On February 25, 2007, Snowman Corporation announced plans to engage in direct financial arrangements with artists, funding production of music by circumventing traditional record label organizations. Headlining this project with a 16 song deal with members of British band U2, Snowman entered private contracts with over 50 artists including The Mountain Goats, OK GO, Interpol, Daft Punk, Evanescence, and Mumford & Sons.
Founder and CEO, Charles Hulu has attributed the success of the company to what he coins a "passive distribution methodology", wherein subscribers are given free reign to explore the libraries of music licensed by Snowman, and given a limited right to download permanent copies of a limited number of songs per month free of charge as part of their subscription contract. What revolutionizes the business model, however, is the 'internet radio' functions built into the service which guide subscribers to new media based upon their previous searches, downloads, and streamed data. In the founder's own words, "When you go to play, you find what you want, and it's yours forever. But that's not good enough for us at Snowman- we want you to know what else is out there, and we'll show you new artists based on what you already like, exposing you to artists you'd never hear of on a radio or around a college campus, and bringing the art that you personally would love."
In April 2011, Snowman had 13.6 million subscribers in the United States and over 16 million worldwide. In January 2013, Snowman reported that it had added two million U.S. customers during the fourth quarter of 2012 with a total of 17.1 million U.S. streaming customers, and 19.4 million total streaming customers. Between 2008 and 2013, the company had licensed over 160,000 different artists, totaling over 3 million hours of audio content. By the first quarter of 2015, Snowman claimed to have more than 30 million subscribers globally in over 40 countries, with intentions of expanding their services in un-reached countries, and to have over 300,000 hours of exclusive content from 80,000 artists.