After having launched 2009 and grown to over 3 million subscribers last year, the music download service Beezik will be ceasing its operations. The owners of the Beezik platform, BeeAd, decided to voluntarily shut down Beezik principally because their model, which was based on advertising supported downloads, was deemed not to be viable outside of France. While this wasn’t a principal concern in the past, BeeAd’s merger with eBuzzing last March, who are rapidly expanding internationally, forced the two entities to harmonize their overall growth strategy and, consequently, eliminate off-strategy activities such as Beezik.
Speaking with Frenchweb, BeeAd’s president Jean Canzoneri and director general Thomas Pasquet elaborated on the decision stating that they “took the decision as a result of the strategy of the (eBuzzing) group which is now present in six countries and opening a new office in the US. Beezik, which is highly focused on the French market, would be very difficult to export mainly because of the strict requirements of the music labels”. They also added that they preferred to “focus on our core business which is the distribution of video advertising on the web, which is experienced very strong growth of +80% last year”. As for the Beezik team, they confirmed that all of the team will remain within the eBuzzing group, stressing that their efforts will be vital to supporting eBuzzing’s strong momentum and growth.
With 1.5 million titles downloaded each month, 1 million downloads of their mobile app, and 3 million subscribers, Beezik had certainly grown to a solid success. However, given the competitiveness of the digital music space and the strong trend towards streaming, it also makes general strategic sense for them to pull back from this market and re-focus on the activities where they have an advantage and most excel, video advertising innovation and distribution.