Social Music Site Serendip Is Shutting Down

Israeli-based music tech startup Serendip is shutting down on September 22nd.  Serendip pulled music recommendations from a users friends on Facebook and Twitter to create playlists that could then be customized. In fact, Hypebot readers were among the first to experience the social music service via beta invites we distributed in 2011.

But now, Serendip is shutting down and the broke the news in an email to users on Monday:

"After 3 years of amazing ups and downs, all to the sound of great music aired by all of you, we’ve realized that we can no longer sustain Serendip as a music service. The high costs of processing millions of posts every day, and serving relevant and engaging playlists to our users across our web service and mobile app (yes, no Android, I know…) are really bigger than we can handle, a very challenging position for a small startup to be in."

In other words, despite the fact that the music was being pulled at no cost from YouTube and Soundcloud, Serendip could no figure out how to turn a profit. It's a sad story we're likely to hear more frequently in the coming months.

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