Fabchannel Dries Up

Amsterdam-based online concert destination site Fabchannel is calling it quits after nine years because it’s struggling to get content and advertising revenue.

The site has been promoting concert recordings of national and international artists online to an international audience, but recently it’s found it more difficult to get the major record labels to give consent to record their artists.

At the same time, the online advertising and sponsoring market has been put under big pressure due to decreasing budgets of advertisers and sponsors.

The two essential ingredients of the Fabchannel business model were international streaming rights and international advertising revenue. After a substantial investment in 2007, the site has been focusing fully on increasing its reach among the international audience and the development and implementation of online advertising formats and partnerships.

After an energetic start in 2008 and the introduction of video commercials on Fabchannel.com, media partnerships with renowned news sites like nu.nl and Spiegel.de as well as signing a worldwide partnership with Universal Music Group, in the last few months it has been getting ever more difficult to reach the set targets.

The audience has not increased as planned and, at the same time, the online advertising and sponsoring market has been put under big pressure due to decreasing budgets of advertisers and sponsors.

The management and shareholders of Fabchannel expect that this situation is not going to change during the next years. Therefore, they have jointly taken the decision to stop all activities in order to avoid getting into financial problems and thereby possibly lose the ability to later use the archive the site has been building.

Fabchannel’s concert archive was set to shut down March 13, although the company will continue to try to reach settlements with its employees and suppliers.