Murfie
Defunct commercial music streaming service
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Murfie was a commercial music streaming service based initially in Madison, Wisconsin. Its members buy, sell, and trade compact discs and stream or download their content.[1] Additionally, members could digitize and store CDs and LPs they sent from home to Murfie.[2]
| |
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Music storage and streaming service |
| Founded | 2011 |
| Founders | Preston Austin, Matt Younkle |
| Defunct | 2019 |
| Fate | Ceased operations; assets acquired |
| Headquarters | Madison, Wisconsin, United States |
| Products | CD and vinyl digitization and streaming |
Murfie was featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Fast Company, Time magazine, and National Public Radio.[citation needed]
History
Preston Austin and Matt Younkle co-founded the company.[2] Younkle left in 2015 and Rex Mangat, company CEO, departed in September 2019, shortly before the company ceased operations.[2]
In 2012, Murfie became a member of Techstars.[3] In 2014, the company announced they had lossless FLAC streaming available on Sonos devices.[4] In November 2019, it ceased operations[2] until January 2020, when Crossies LLC acquired the site's assets. John Fenley is the owner of both Murfie and Crossies.[5]
When Murfie shut down, disks were not returned to customers, and Crossies committed to returning collections to those who had entrusted the Madison company with their music.[5] Of the 750,000 discs held by Crossies, requests were received for only about 150,000.[5]