It’s official: MySpace has closed on its acquisition of Imeem, the streaming music service. It is paying a fire-sale price of $1 million, sources familiar with the situation tell me, and could pay up to $7 million to $9 million in earn-outs for key employees, who will likely include CEO Dalton Caldwell. Investors like Sequoia and Warner Music Group had pumped at least $25 million into the venture.
Digital music entrepreneurs Dave Goldberg and Bob Roback, who built up Launch Media in the 1990s and ran Yahoo’s music group for much of this decade, are trying their hands at tunes again.
This time, though, they’re not trying to convince consumers to pay for music or asking advertisers to subsidize it. Instead, they’re trying to act as a middleman between labels and publishers who own music and advertisers, Hollywood and other folks who want to use the tunes for commercial purposes.
Vevo, the music industry’s version of Hulu, now has its own version of Providence Equity, the outside investor that took a flyer on the Web TV and movie joint venture: Abu Dhabi Media Company has purchased a stake in the company from owners Universal Music and Sony. No financials released, though I’m told the deal values the JV at $300 million.
After a couple of miserable quarters, NBC Universal finally has some good news to announce: Boosted by a one-time gain, earnings actually increased in Q3, even though the entertainment conglomerate’s revenue kept dropping. Perhaps those numbers will cheer Comcast investors, who have been beating up the cable company ever since news of its talks to buy NBCU surfaced last month.
Does the economic turmoil have you pinching pennies and clipping coupons? Then the newest product from the Financial Times isn’t for you: The daily’s new quarterly magazine is aimed at people worth more than $1.6 million.
Web video companies that wanted to take on YouTube are having a very hard time. But Web video isn’t going away, either, and there has to be some way to make it work for users, publishers and investors. Right?
Hence, another round of funding for 5min, a video start-up that just raised a $7.5 million B round. New investor Globespan Capital Partners led the round, and Spark Capital, the VC shop that has made several video bets (along with a big one in Twitter) made a second investment.
Does the world need another gadget site? Yes, say two of the gadget world’s biggest stars, who are launching gdgt.com today. The site is the work of Peter Rojas, who helped build Gizmodo and Engadget, and Ryan Block, who took the torch from Rojas after he moved on. Gizmodo and Engadget are the best known and most powerful of the new generation of gadget sites, which makes Rojas and Block revered by the gadget gang and able to cobble together funding. But they’re still taking on a very crowded field.
Twitter notched yet another milestone yesterday when it finally showed up on comScore’s index of Web search milestones. The catch: It barely registered, pulling down a search share of just 0.001 percent. But I’m sure that comScore is missing the majority of Twitter’s searches. So what’s the real number?
Digital music start-ups seem to come in two flavors these days: Those being sued by the major music labels and those with expensive licensing deals they can’t afford.
But for some reason, plucky Grooveshark, which runs a very nice, free streaming music service, has stayed out of both of those buckets until now. I’ve confirmed that EMI Music Group is suing the site–whose motto is “Play any song in the world, for free!”–for copyright violation.
Looking for lots of specifics about the $200 million at $10 billion valuation deal that Facebook and Digital Sky Technologies just announced? Then you have come to the wrong conference call, my friend. But for what it’s worth, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg did sound fairly upbeat and confident during his chat with reporters Tuesday morning–the way you’d expect someone who just cashed a check for a couple hundred million to sound.
The big picture: Even though Facebook’s official valuation has slid from $15 billion (November 2007, when Microsoft invested) to $10 billion, Zuckerberg is OK with that, arguing that 1) that deal was done at the peak of the market, and 2) it was never really a financial deal, but a way for Microsoft to partner up with Facebook.
Facebook is indeed taking money from Russian investors Digital Sky Technologies. As previously reported, the social network is selling $200 million of preferred stock at a $10 billion valuation; DST will also buy up to $100 million of common stock at a lower valuation later this year.
Many of you are just hearing Josh Marshall’s name for the first time, following the New York Times’s admission that columnist Maureen Dowd “failed to attribute” some of her column to him. But that’s a shame because Marshall’s site is noteworthy on its own merits: It’s a self-funded, profitable new-media site that does both blogging/aggregation and real reporting.
Nope, Twitter still hasn’t trotted out a business model yet, and that may or may not be a problem for potential acquirers like Google or Microsoft. But it’s a nonissue for a growing number of start-ups hoping to succeed simply by positioning themselves in Twitter’s general vicinity. Today’s example: StockTwits, a day-trader-meets-Twitter site that just raised $800,000 from venture capital firm True Ventures.
A new series of reports argues that billionaire David Geffen doesn’t want to make money by investing in the New York Times–he wants to save it. Fair enough. But how exactly does he plan to do that?
Last year, Warner Music Group boasted about its investments in two digital music start-ups. Today the label says those dollars were wasted. Bummer for imeem, which is trying to raise more money.
Peter Kafka has been covering media and technology since 1997, when he joined the staff of Forbes magazine. Most recently, he has been the managing editor of the tech and media Web site, Silicon Alley Insider. Read more »
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