Digital media company Federated Media Inc. is ready to introduce
Crowdfire, a multimedia service that will host real-time, user-generated audio and video transmitted from live music events. According to a Twitter message posted today by
vacationing FM founder and chief executive John Battelle, the site is
expected to enter its beta-testing phase on Monday, July 28. Crowdfire will make a broader
debut at the upcoming
Outside Lands Festival in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park next month, where it will have a pavilion. Last month, FM revealed its
partnership with Outside Lands, a
three-day festival starring Radiohead and Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers among dozens of other acts.
The Crowdfire site, produced in conjunction with Microsoft Corp. [
MSFT], will feature "mashups" of user-generated transmissions of audio and video from live music events, creating crowdsourced Webcasts from a variety of angles. An FM spokesman assures me that legal and copyright issues surrounding the broadcast of music at private, ticketholder-only events "have been ironed out" and that Crowdfire's broadcasts will not be exclusive to certain events for which FM has partnered with the promoter.
Battelle, a former editor at
Wired, the founding CEO of dot-com-era weekly magazine
The Industry Standard and author of Google chronicle
The Search, noted in more Twitter messages that it "
used to be [that] everyone held up lighters. [N]ow it's [cell] phones and Flip videos," and that Crowdfire will "
[b]ring together the experience of the crowd and make it shareable."
Best known for its blog-focused advertising network, FM expects to be a wider-ranging media company that "support[s] independent
website authors and audiences, by connecting
them to marketers." FM
accepted a $50 million minority investment from Oak Investment Partners in April, reportedly at a pre-money valuation of about $200 million.
-- Paul BonanosSee April 15 Tech Confidential post about Federated Media's new funding
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