Personics

Personics was the first on-demand custom music service, and was started in 1986. Features of the Personics system included:

• listening posts to preview songs
• digital storage on hard drive
• $0.75 - $1.00 per song

Go to this link for a Business 2.0 follow-up article.

While we continued to follow the long list of subsequent "on demand" music ventures (IBM/Blockbuster, Napster, etc.) we did not foresee the Apple/iTunes breakthrough, in spite of our background, geographical proximity, and connections with Apple. It remains our best, failed idea.