We've just been informed that SingShot has been acquired by Electronic Arts for an undisclosed sum. The San Francisco-based online karaoke community is a rival to Bix.com, now owned by Yahoo, and I was impressed by its YouTube-like approach to karaoke, complete with ratings, comments and favorites. The founders, Ranah Edelin and CTO Niranjan Nagar, previously worked on the core team at Listen.com, creating the Rhapsody music service.
Nonetheless, SingShot enforced a paid business model for a long time: after your trial expired, you had to pay up. It was only when they enabled free accounts that the service became very appealing: it's one of the few social sites that I continue to check back on from time to time. The five people on the SingShot team will join the EA Sims Division, and the technology will be used on other EA community projects.
It's an unexpected acquirer for SingShot, but the site is likely a good buy: it has a lot of mainstream appeal, and a strong community. Look out for a press release later today.
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