You know those songs you hear on someone”s MySpace or Facebook page? Many times they come from Sonific, a service that allows you to put up the song of your choice on almost any web page, such as MySpace. They basically provide free music widgets/media players that you drop into your social profile page or your blog or home page.
It”s a great tool. The limitation I immediately found was the lack of mainstream songs and artists in their library. Their library definitely seems to be made up mostly of up-and-coming artists and records. Apparently this is because of the difficulty of getting proper approval and licensing to share copyrighted music. They hope to expand their music library through their new Sonific Music Network (which is www.sonific.net), which allows record labels and artists to add their songs to the Sonific library for the public to use. It is certainly a grassroots approach to sharing and distributing music. Otherwise, the site is fun and easy to use. I added a song to my blog because of it.
Sonific.com In Their Own Words
Sonific was founded in July 2005, with the mission of making large catalogs of great music available for many types of audio-visual use on the Internet, both for private / non-commercial or promotional purposes, as well as for professional (B2B) users, and licensed products and services.
Sonific”s SongSpots™ service is our first B2C release, reflecting our philosophy that offering better tools for music discovery and providing new, free platforms of exposure is what will really sell music, going forward, and that the viral nature of the Internet is perfectly suited to help get the word out for new and established artists and their music.
We also believe that many of today”s “digital natives” and “peer-producers” want to personalize their web presences, customize the look and feel of their sites, integrate multimedia where they can, and will ultimately use the web as a fully interactive, 2-way, personalized, and therefore “sonified” medium.
Equally important, Sonific”s business model is driven by the concept of empowering the user and the content providers, and we believe that this approach will be a very powerful force in the digital music economy.
Sonific is privately funded by a well-known group of U.S.-based angel investors.
Why Sonific.com It Might Be A Killer
Any personal profile on a social networking site such as MySpace, or anyone”s blog page, is improved with the addition of music. This service makes adding music really easy and fun to almost any possible social networking or blog hosting site, and they seem dedicated to making sure they are complying with all music industry rules and regulations while at the same time helping to build an audience for cutting edge and up-and-coming artists.
Some Questions About Sonific.com
How are they working to get more mainstream artists and songs into their library? How are they competing against other sites that do offer mainstream music, even if those other sites are doing it illegally? Are they going to add music videos too? Finally, are they making a profit and how? 
