This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Digital
Warner owner invests in Beats streaming platform
By Chris Cooke | Published on Wednesday 6 March 2013
Beats has secured $60 million in new investment to help develop and launch its new streaming music service, which should go live later this year. With the working title Daisy, Beats co-founder Jimmy Iovine recently said the service would actually just go with the Beats brand when it launches.
As previously reported, development of the Beats streaming platform is being led by Topspin founder Ian Rogers with creative input from Trent Reznor. It will operate through a separate company, a subsidiary of the headphone-making Beats Electronics firm, and it’s likely that is what the new investors have bought into.
A number of investors have provided the $60 million, though perhaps most interesting on the list is Len Blavatnik’s Access Industries, which has already invested in another streaming music company Deezer, and more importantly owns Warner Music. Blavatnik said of his latest investment: “Beats has the vision, the brand, the management team and now the investor group to effectively change the expectations and experiences of a music subscription service”.
Rogers, Reznor and Iovine have promised that their new streaming platform, most likely developed out of the existing MOG set up Beats bought last year, will crack the discovery thing in a way none of their more established competitors so far have. Time will tell.
