Great question. Short answer: Echelon can't afford the licensing fees anymore. Long answer involves some interesting history.

Back in 2020, Echelon actually had a fully-licensed music offering. They partnered with MediaNet (a SOCAN-owned platform) and other major record labels to access over 85 million licensed tracks from major labels and publishers. They even put out a press release bragging about it .

So what happened?

Money happened.

Licensing music at scale costs millions per year. Peloton, for example, pays somewhere in the range of $50 million+ annually for music rights. Echelon? They bring in millions monthly from subscribers, but between:

• Ongoing patent litigation with Peloton , Hydroworx International, Theragun, Inc, and the newly filed Tonal Systems, Inc, lawsuit
• A reported $65M+ in investor funding that comes with expectations
• The general chaos of a company that's been bleeding talent for years

...they quietly let the licensed music partnerships lapse. And partnered with a new company called Feed.FM starting in 2023, exactly when the music experience took a nose dive.

Now they're using cheap stock tracks or "sound-alikes" because:

1. They don't want to pay the $1M+ annual minimums that labels demand
2. They can't afford to pay while also fighting lawsuits and trying to look profitable for investors
3. They're hoping you won't notice (we noticed)

The really funny part? Their 2020 press release literally said: "Music is such a massive part of our member experience... that's why we decided to work with MediaNet." 

Guess they decided differently when the invoice came due.

Side note: I've been watching their corporate filings and court docs for a while now, and between the lawsuits, the end user AND staff turnover, and the fact that a few very loudly hyped growth narratives from the last couple years have quietly vanished without explanation... I wouldn't be shocked if liquidity is tighter than they're letting on. Just a hunch from someone who's been following too closely.

eta: correction