And that’s what Beyond Oblivion pulled off. The would-be service closed down at the end of last year, before it ever started up.

My hunch is that the company was doomed from the get-go, but Evolver.fm’s Eliot Van Buskirk diligently digs in behind the scenes to find out exactly what happened, and where the money went. It’s a great, gruesome read.

What’s particularly notable about Beyond Oblivion’s collapse is that you can’t accuse the big music labels of killing it with extortionate fees. They planned to get extortionate fees, and Beyond Oblivion’s strategy apparently involved complying — the company had planned to hand over $150 million in upfront licensing payments.

But they never got a chance. Instead, the money went into to all sorts of other stuff that didn’t involve delivering music to consumers. Like expensive marketing consultants. And a promotional video, featuring a vocal-fried narrator, that you can see at the bottom of this post.

Oh. And there was also a fake Steve Jobs:

At CES 2011, [CEO Adam Kidron] already hired a Steve Jobs impersonator to interrupt business meetings between himself and would-be partners “as a joke.” The Steve Jobs look-alike also apparently “roamed the show floor to fool attendees, while an employee filmed the whole thing” — a film that may have been meant for promotional purposes somehow, but which was only seen by employees.

At least Beyond Oblivion’s investors (who include News Corp., which also owns this Web site), didn’t lose any money on this year’s CES show.

Kidron planned to hire models to walk the CES show floor with the words “wanna boinc” on their panties and T-shirts, in the case of the females, or on their chests in the case of Speedo-wearing males. All of the models would have offered demonstrations to CES attendees, giving them a button with the words “I boinced at CES” printed on them. The buttons would also have functioned as the invitation to a private party at a Las Vegas strip club. These plans were scrapped in November as the company unraveled.

Or more accurately: Did you know Lou Reed used to have an iPhone app, but doesn’t anymore? But that he probably will again?

The beginnings of this one come to us via Eliot Van Buskirk and his excellent Evolver.fm blog, which pointed out today that Reed’s web site promotes an app called “Lou Zoom.”

This one tweaks the address book on Apple’s handsets, apparently, and it looks sort of interesting. I don’t really need the font magnifier, yet. But I do find the search function on the iPhone’s stock address book pretty limited. So that could be cool. Alas, as Buskirk notes, the app isn’t actually in the app store right now.

But, it turns out, it has been: Reed and his team introduced the $1.99 app back in the fall of 2009. And it would still be in the store now except someone has let some kind of registration lapse, says Ben Syverson, the developer who built the app.

Syverson says Reed’s management is trying to sort out whatever’s keeping the app out of the store, and assumes it will be back there shortly. He also says he think he’ll end up building an Android version, too.

My hunch is that Lou Zoom was not a huge money maker for Reed and company, or else they’d be paying much more attention to their app store status. Still, they did find time to make this promotional video, featuring the man himself, and some very exotic glasses. And a sword?

And now I gotta run, so I can stock up on essentials. Talk soon!