BitPass

Last updated
Bitpass, Inc.
Company type Private
IndustryConsumer Internet,
Digital content,
Online payments
Founded2002;22 years ago (2002) in Mountain View, California, United States
DefunctJanuary 26, 2007 (2007-01-26)
Headquarters San Mateo, California, United States
Key people
Kurt Huang, Founder
Gyuchang Jun, Founder, CTO
Doug Knopper, CEO
ProductsBitpass buyer account,
Bitpass Professional merchant account,
Bitpass Studio merchant account
Revenueundisclosed
Number of employees
undisclosed
Website www.bitpass.com

BitPass was an American company from 2002-2007 that developed an online payment system for digital content and services including micropayments. One of its best-known projects was the Mperia online music store catering to unsigned artists.

Contents

Background

Kurt Huang and Gyuchang Jun founded BitPass. Michael O'Donnell was brought on as CEO in 2004, but left by April 2005, and was eventually replaced by Doug Knopper in November 2005. [1]

Although the origins of the idea for the company dated back to 1999, the company incorporated and got off the ground with $1.5 million in joint venture funding led by Garage Technology Ventures in late 2002. The first test version of the product was launched in June 2003. [2] [3] In late 2004, a second funding round of $11.75 million was announced. [4]

For the content buyer, Bitpass worked like a pre-paid telephone card: the buyer signed up for the service and put money into an account using a credit card or PayPal. This stored-value amount could be used to purchase digital content or services. Transaction fees were paid by the content provider. For payments under $5, the charge was 15% of the price paid by the buyer (Bitpass Professional merchant account fee). BitPass also partnered with major technology and financial services companies such as Microsoft, PayPal, the Royal Bank of Scotland and First Data.[ citation needed ]

On January 19, 2007 Bitpass announced that they were shutting down, and operations officially closed on January 26, 2007. [5] [6]

Mperia

Mperia logo.png

Mperia was an online music store founded in 2003 by BitPass to use the BitPass payment system. Launched by Huang and Joshua Ellis, it was aimed toward allowing independent musicians to sell their music online. [7] [8] Artists could upload their own music directly, and could price their own music, with tracking costing between US$0.25 and US$1.50. No digital rights management features were permitted. Artists kept 70% of each track's revenue.

In 2004, Mperia partnered with CD Baby to sell tracks from CDBaby's catalog. [9]

With the shutdown of BitPass, Mperia also shut down in early 2007. [5]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">PayPal</span> American multinational financial technology company

PayPal Holdings, Inc. is an American multinational financial technology company operating an online payments system in the majority of countries that support online money transfers; it serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper methods such as checks and money orders. The company operates as a payment processor for online vendors, auction sites and many other commercial users, for which it charges a fee.

iTunes Store Digital media store

The iTunes Store is a digital media store operated by Apple Inc. It opened on April 28, 2003, as a result of Steve Jobs' push to open a digital marketplace for music. As of April 2020, iTunes offered 60 million songs, 2.2 million apps, 25,000 TV shows, and 65,000 films. When it opened, it was the only legal digital catalog of music to offer songs from all five major record labels.

A royalty payment is a payment made by one party to another that owns a particular asset, for the right to ongoing use of that asset. Royalties are typically agreed upon as a percentage of gross or net revenues derived from the use of an asset or a fixed price per unit sold of an item of such, but there are also other modes and metrics of compensation. A royalty interest is the right to collect a stream of future royalty payments.

A micropayment is a financial transaction involving a very small sum of money and usually one that occurs online. A number of micropayment systems were proposed and developed in the mid-to-late 1990s, all of which were ultimately unsuccessful. A second generation of micropayment systems emerged in the 2010s.

eMusic Online music and audiobook store

eMusic is an online music and audiobook store that operates by subscription. In exchange for a monthly subscription eMusic users can download a fixed number of MP3 tracks per month. eMusic was established in 1998, is headquartered in New York City with an office in London, and is owned by TriPlay.

Digital distribution, also referred to as content delivery, online distribution, or electronic software distribution, among others, is the delivery or distribution of digital media content such as audio, video, e-books, video games, and other software.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yahoo! Music</span> Former music service by Yahoo

Yahoo! Music was a brand under which Yahoo! provided music services including Internet radio, a digital music store, music streaming service, media player software, and original programming.

Paid content is content on the Internet – such as text, graphics, video and downloads – which is paid for. Paid content is usually copyrighted.

Revver was an American video sharing website that hosted user-generated content. Until its shutdown in 2011, Revver attached advertising to user-submitted video clips and originally offered to share ad revenue with the video creators. Videos could be displayed, downloaded, and shared across the web in either Apple QuickTime or FLV format. In addition, Revver was a video publishing platform that enabled third parties to build their own "Revverized" site. Revver allowed developers to create a complete white label of the Revver platform.

Yahoo! Music Unlimited was a music streaming service and digital music store by Yahoo! Music.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SNOCAP</span>

SNOCAP was founded by Shawn Fanning, Jordan Mendelson, and Ron Conway. Other SNOCAP employees included music lawyer Christian Castle, the company's first General Counsel, and Ali Aydar, the company's Chief Operating Officer, who joined imeem after its acquisition of SNOCAP in April 2008.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MOG (online music)</span>

MOG was a paid subscription online music service and blog network, where subscribers could listen to and read about music. Subscribers could play tracks available in its catalog on a variety of digital devices, including computers, handheld devices, Sonos systems and television. MOG also allowed users to access aggregated editorial content from music blogs, user posts, and in-house editors.

The online service imeem was a social media website where users interacted with each other by streaming, uploading and sharing music and music videos. It operated from 2003 until 2009 when it was shut down after being acquired by MySpace.

PassAlong Networks, also known as Tennessee Pacific Group, LLC, was a developer of digital media innovations and services located in Franklin, Tennessee. The company had a digital music library of three million licensed songs, two million of which were raw MP3 music files, and provided a series of products and services in the digital media marketplace.

Zong was a mobile payment company that allowed users to make micropayments on the Internet if they have a postpaid mobile phone. The payments were charged to their mobile phone bills by the mobile operator. The company was acquired by eBay in 2011 and disappeared in 2015.

RightsFlow is an American company that provides organizations, bands, songwriters and individuals with music licensing services and royalty payment services. It was founded in 2007.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Talpa Network</span> Dutch media conglomerate

Talpa Network is a Dutch media conglomerate created by John de Mol Jr. in 2017.

This is a timeline of online money transfer and e-commerce service PayPal, owned by eBay from 2002 to 2015 and an independent company before and after that.

The business of webcomics involves creators earning a living through their webcomic, often using a variety of revenue channels. Those channels may include selling merchandise such as t-shirts, jackets, sweatpants, hats, pins, stickers, and toys, based on their work. Some also choose to sell print versions or compilations of their webcomics. Many webcomic creators make use of online advertisements on their websites, and possibly even product placement deals with larger companies. Crowdfunding through websites such as Kickstarter and Patreon are also popular choices for sources of potential income.

References

  1. (16 November 2005). After a long wait, a new CEO at BitPass, San Francisco Business Times
  2. Tedeschi, Bob (21 July 2003). E-Commerce Report; Companies are trying once again to find ways to turn penny-ante charges for Web viewing into profits, The New York Times
  3. White, Elizabeth (28 January 2004). Innovating bit by bit, Palo Alto Weekly
  4. Napier, H. Albert, et al. Creating a winning E-business, p. 171-72 (2d ed. 2006) ( ISBN   978-0619217426)
  5. 1 2 Vitka, William (20 January 2007). Mperia, Bitpass Shutting Down, New York Post
  6. (19 January 2007). Bitpass croaks — is this the end of micropayments?, VentureBeat
  7. Steve Gordon (2005). The Future of the Music Business: How to Succeed with the New Digital Technologies : a Guide for Artists and Entrepreneurs. Backbeat Books. pp. 228–. ISBN   978-0-87930-844-5 . Retrieved 18 June 2014.
  8. http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=SJ&s_site=mercurynews&p_multi=SJ&p_theme=realcities&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_topdoc=1&p_text_direct-0=1036A4943874038A&p_field_direct-0=document_id&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&s_trackval=GooglePM Archived 2014-10-11 at the Wayback Machine
  9. "CD Baby Gets Digital with BitPass". Sonicstate. Retrieved 2021-03-18.