european music - Programming Blog

Sources: Spotify Takes Investment From Sean Parker At Founders Fund

24 Feb 2010

This is has not been confirmed by either party, but we’ve heard from multiple sources that European music startup Spotify has closed a venture investment from Founders Fund. Managing Partner Sean Parker, who was a cofounder of Napster and President of Facebook, led the round for Founders Fund, and we believe he may have take a board of directors seat.

We do not know the size of the investement; however, we believe it may have been a token amount to get Parker’s involvement in the company. The investment was likely done at the same €200 million valuation as the round Spotify raised in late 2009.

This is the first U.S. investor in Spotify, and the service is only available in some European countries. A U.S. launch has been broadly anticipated for months.

We’ve also heard this was a competitive round and a number of U.S. venture funds were interested. Parker, with his ties to Facebook and his experience in early P2P music sharing via Napster, is likely the winner for his strong strategic potential.

In January we reported that Spotify had been in talks with Google over integration with Android for their U.S. launch. When Spotify does launch in the U.S. (assuming it does), we expect them to have a large U.S. partner alongside them. Google, Facebook and Microsoft are all likely to be talking to them, and we wouldn’t be surprised to see one or more of them sign a partnership.

CrunchBase Information

Spotify

The Founders Fund

Sean Parker

Information provided by CrunchBase

Go to Source

No Comments
Tags: cofounder, european music, facebook, founders fund, google, investement, p2p music, venture funds, venture investment

INQ To Build Spotify Branded Phone

In: web resources

8 Oct 2009

Wow, if nothing else, new European music service Spotify, which is yet to launch in the U.S., has captured everyone’s attention. TechCrunch Europe reports that Swedish telecommunication service provider Telia will soon release a Spotify-branded mobile phone.

A source with knowledge of the deal tells us that London, UK based INQ is developing the Spotify-branded phone. The company already creates phones with tight integrations to social networking services like Facebook, Skype and Windows Live Messenger.

INQ is backed by Li Ka-Shing, who recently invested in Spotify.

We’re still gathering details on this, such as date of availability and price. The phone is in the design stage right now, and there are plans, we’re told, to roll it out to all markets via partnerships with various carriers.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.