Fizy: Turkey's Music Revolution – A Story of Dreams & Downfalls

Back when Spotify in Turkey was just a distant dream, and YouTube was solely for watching videos… Listening to music online was an adventure fraught with virus-ridden MP3 sites or the anxiety of downloading the wrong file on LimeWire.

It was exactly during that era, towards the end of 2008, that a figure writing under the pseudonym 'huzursuz' (restless) on Ekşi Sözlük announced a website that would change internet history. Its name: Fizy.

Genius in Simplicity: The Birth of Fizy

Fizy's initial design was astonishingly simple: a black background, a white search bar in the middle. With just one answer to the question 'What do you want to listen to?', millions of songs appeared within seconds. But behind this simplicity lay a clever indexing system, not massive server farms. It was a brilliant search engine that gathered music content from YouTube and other platforms under one roof.

So, who was this visionary? Ercan Yarış. With a team of just 3 people, he dealt one of the first blows to the cumbersome music industry of that period. Fizy began its test broadcast in December 2008.

The Rise: Turkey's Digital Music Habits Transform

From the moment it launched, Fizy grew at an incredible pace. In 2009, it secured agreements with MÜ-YAP and Sony-BMG, operating on legal grounds. Even then, it set out with a model that respected copyright.

Let's illustrate this growth with figures:

• June 2009: Just six months old, it reached 40 million monthly page views, and its member count surpassed 100,000.
• Advertising Agreements: It collaborated with giant brands like Mini, Coca-Cola, and Turkcell.
• Innovative Features: Its 'Fizy Mood' feature offering music recommendations based on your mood, along with membership and playlist features, quickly hooked everyone to Fizy.
• Awards: In the same year, it won first place in the 'Best New Web Initiative' and 'Best Music Site' categories at the Webrazzi 2009 awards. It's important to remember that all of this was the work of just a 3-person team!

By 2010, Fizy was a giant:

• January: 250,000 members.
• August: The 500,000 member mark was surpassed. Monthly page views exceeded 150 million. The number of playlists created by members topped 1 million.
• 35% of active users visited the site daily, each member had an average of 2 playlists, and visitors spent an average of 36 minutes on the site.

Fizy was completely transforming Turkey's digital music habits.

The site's visitor profile was also quite balanced: 51% male, 49% female. In terms of age distribution, 45% were 15-24 years old, 30% were 25-34, 15% were 35-44, and 10% were over 45.

Even the New York Times gave its seal of approval: Fizy was cited as "the world's best music search engine." This 3-person Anatolian Tiger was making its voice heard from Turkey to the entire world.

On the World Stage: Mashable Awards

Towards the end of 2010, exciting news arrived for Fizy: it had made it to the top 5 at the Mashable Awards, one of the world's most prestigious internet awards! No Turkish site had ever reached these finals before. Fizy was competing in the same category as global giants like last.fm and Pandora. This platform, reaching 700,000 unique visitors daily, had grown by 400% in the last 6 months.

They were set to be in the top 3 at the Mashable Awards and would receive an award on behalf of Turkey at the ceremony on January 6, 2011. They would be sitting at the same table as executives from tech giants like Apple, Facebook, Yahoo, and Google. A team of 3. From Turkey. On the same stage as global companies! At this very point, the story took a dark turn.

The Breaking Point: MÜ-YAP and That Black Screen

December 28, 2010. Fizy users logged onto the site only to be met not with music, but with a cold court order. The Associated Rights Holders' Phonogram Producers' Professional Union, or MÜ-YAP, had applied, and the court decided to block access to Fizy.

Ercan Yarış did not stay silent. That same night, he published a statement on his personal blog that would go down in internet history:

We are the Fizy team. We love you very much and are grateful to you. Thanks to you, we grew and came this far. We had 700,000 unique daily visitors.

In his statement, Yarış responded point by point to the claims of MÜ-YAP President Bülent Forta. Forta had stated, "We had 20 meetings with Fizy in 7 months, presented 5 different business plans, but they didn't comply." However, Yarış's account was very different: They had started discussions with MÜ-YAP the week they launched, had signed a contract, and paid royalties every month. When it was time to renew the contract, MÜ-YAP significantly increased the price, and the Fizy team said "okay" every time. They were about to accept two additional conditions when… their calls weren't answered, and emails weren't returned.

Yarış wrote on his blog: Fizy had accepted MÜ-YAP's own offer. Through lawyers, they had sent urgent emails on December 13 and 14, 2010, expressing their desire to reach an agreement. But there was a warning letter that needed a response within 3 days, and Fizy wanted to object before the warning period expired but couldn't reach the other party.

Imagine: On the eve of receiving an award on behalf of Turkey at the global Mashable Awards, sitting at the same table as Apple and Facebook executives, they were shut down in their own country. A dream reaching 700,000 unique daily visitors was silenced by a warning letter.

Internet users of that era also didn't remain silent. Anger erupted in technology forums. There were comments like, "Fizy doesn't even host content; it just searches and helps you find content from sites like YouTube and Soundcloud. Why don't they ban Google and YouTube then?" Another user wrote, "This incident is clear proof of why we cannot advance in technology and are condemned to monopolization."

Turkcell Steps In: A Second Chance

However, the Fizy brand was so strong that it wasn't allowed to vanish. In April 2011, Turkcell acquired 70% of Fizy's shares. Copyright issues were resolved, the site relaunched, and royalty payments were made billable.

In subsequent years, Fizy began to institutionalize. In August 2012, the paid subscription model Fizy Premium was introduced. In April 2013, the virtual store Fizy Shop opened, followed by the online radio platform Fizy Live in May. In the same year, single song sales and a monthly subscription model also came to life.

In December 2014, Turkcell took over the remaining shares from Ercan Yarış and his team, becoming the sole owner of Fizy. But here, an identity crisis began. Turkcell owned both its own "Turkcell Müzik" platform and Fizy. The two brands became rivals within the same company. In March 2015, Turkcell Müzik and Fizy playlists were merged, and Fizy's broadcast was stopped. Turkcell decided to continue solely with its own music brand.

And just when everyone thought Fizy was dead…

Return and Legacy: The Iconic Brand's Comeback

In April 2016, Turkcell realized it was impossible to kill that iconic name. With Deezer, Spotify, and Apple Music increasing competition in Turkey's online music market, the decision was made to reintroduce Fizy, a brand with extremely high recognition among users, to the arena.

Turkcell CEO Kaan Terzioğlu stated, "We listened to music lovers." Fizy replaced Turkcell Müzik and returned as the main brand. It was no longer just a search bar; it offered video clips, live concerts, mood-based music recommendations, smart search, and a massive catalog. It was open to subscribers of all operators, and Turkcell subscribers didn't have data limit worries.

The Biggest "If Only": What If Things Were Different?

Today, Fizy is a giant platform under Turkcell's umbrella. But we will always remember it for that minimalist revolution that started with the 'restless' Ekşi Sözlük writer and his 3-person team, shaking the world.

Fizy is one of the biggest "if onlys" in Turkey's digital entrepreneurship history. If those obstacles in 2010 hadn't existed, perhaps today we wouldn't be talking about Spotify, but about a global Fizy used by everyone.

Ercan Yarış ended his blog post with these words:

I leave it to the public's conscience to judge the actions of certain individuals who, through misuse of authority, caused the closure of a website belonging to a company that was legal, had a contract, and made royalty payments to professional associations in an invoiced manner.

Presented by Koray's Internet Archive. See you in the next installment, with another "connection error" story.