New social network targets older music fans
By Alex Woodson
NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - GetBack Media, a social network targeted at people over age 35, is set to launch Wednesday stocked with music and TV content.
The site (www.getback.com) focuses on pop culture from 1968-90, and includes a timeline loaded with news and trivia for each year.
GetBack president Chris Dominguez, a former executive at MTV Networks and iFilm, said there's an opportunity to create a destination for people over 35 who might not be enamored of the younger-skewing MySpace and Facebook.
"We found that demographic was coming online with full broadband and using social networking," Dominguez said. "But there wasn't anything created typically for them."
A clear difference between GetBack and the social networking giants is that the site comes with content. Instead of a user having to go out and find a U2 video to put on their page, for example, the site already has that content available.
The site features movie trailers through an agreement with ScreenPlay, a service that has deals with all the major studios, and the pages feature 30-second samples of 750,000 songs through an agreement with All Media Guide.
GetBack also presents music videos from Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group. Dominguez said the company is in discussions with EMI about licensing its music videos.
In addition, GetBack will present options to buy music through Apple's iTunes and Amazon as well as rent films through Netflix. The company will get an affiliate fee from sales of the media through iTunes and Amazon and a bounty fee from Netflix if a user signs up through the service.
The site also has a deal with Hulu, the NBC Universal/News Corp. online video venture, which has such older shows as "Kojak," "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and "The A-Team."
UMG initially will sell the ad inventory for the site in a revenue-sharing agreement.
Reuters/Hollywood Reporter
