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Murfie

Murfie (also DBA Crossies)

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMay 24, 2026
Entity authorityQ16963393
Source-derived summary

Murfie was a commercial music streaming service based initially in Madison, Wisconsin. Its members bought, sold, and traded compact discs and streamed or downloaded their contents. Additionally, members could digitize and store CDs and LPs they sent from home to Murfie. Murfie was featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Fast Company, Time magazine, and National Public Radio.

Preston Austin and Matt Younkle co-founded the company. In 2012, Murfie became a member of startup accelerator and venture capital firm Techstars. In 2014, the company announced they had lossless FLAC streaming available on Sonos devices.

Younkle left in 2015, and Rex Mangat, company CEO, departed in September 2019, shortly before the company ceased operations in November 2019. When Murfie shut down, disks were not returned to customers.

In January 2020, Crossies LLC acquired the site's assets, making its owner John Fenley the owner of Murfie as well.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Murfie” as murfie (also DBA Crossies). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Murfie and Crossies.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2012, 2014, 2015, 2019—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 2010-06-01. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Murfie and Crossies providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Murfie”, the useful work is to connect “murfie (also DBA Crossies)” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16963393. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2012, 2014, 2015 and 2019.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Murfie”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Murfie primary sources, Murfie archive and Murfie research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Murfie”?
  2. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
  3. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Murfie” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.