News Bytes - SoundCloud Debuts Monetization Plan: Ticketfly Acquires "WillCall" App: Trans World Ent. Loses $5.1 mil in Q2

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SoundCloud Debuts Monetization Play With 'On SoundCloud', Announces $100 Million In Funding
It’s a new era for SoundCloud.
 
The audio platform has long been a home to unsigned, independent and even established artists to debut new material -- from Lorde’s The Love Club EP (which ultimately earned her a record deal with Lava/Republic) to Drake’s OVO page, which is often the first place the Toronto rapper debuts new material from himself as well as his OVO-affiliated artists. Heretofore, SoundCloud’s revenue was derived primarily from its Pro accounts and private funding. But beginning today (Aug. 21), the company has announced a three-tiered monetization strategy that will introduce advertising to the platform for the first time, as well the news that SoundCloud has received more than $100 million in funding since its 2007 launch.
 
Jeff Toig, SoundCloud’s chief business officer since September 2013, tells Billboard that the company’s growth has come in three phases -- first was the creation of tools that have allowed users to upload new content and track its engagement, the second was scaling the audience (175 million unique users globally per month, the company has announced), and the new third phase. “This is where we start to figure out how to generate revenue and help our creators make money in order to enable them to build careers with us,” Toig says. “When Alex [Ljung, SoundCloud’s CEO] and Eric [Wahlforss, SoundCloud’s CTO] founded the company, they really saw an opportunity to build a business with a global, open platform that would kind of evolve over time.”
 


'The Upstairs Bar Is Empty': Ticketfly Acquires Forward-Thinking App WillCall

San Francisco-based digital ticketing firm Ticketfly has acquired WillCall, a concert discovery, ticketing, and in-venue commerce application for iOS and Android. The acquisition adds another layer to Ticketfly’s music discovery assets and, perhaps more importantly, gives Ticketfly an entre into the live music entre toward cashless events and all the valuable data that entails.
 
Founded in 2008, Ticketfly has been a pioneer in mobile ticketing and integrating ticketing, marketing, and analytics, and now boasts over 1,300 clients in venues, promoters, and festivals in North America, including 9:30 Club, Pitchfork Music Festival, and Brooklyn Bowl. Founder/co-CEO Andrew Dreskin says the WillCall acquisition will be a key asset in Ticketfly’s goal to enhance the live music experience for both fans and clients.
 
Early on, the sleek look and overall functionality of the WillCall app appealed to the “tech geek” in Dreskin. “Universally, when you talk to people about WillCall, one of the first things that comes up is how striking the app is, both the aesthetics and the underlying architecture,” he tells Billboard. “This [acquisition] is really about re-imagining the live event experience. I’ve been espousing this notion for awhile: the way people experience live events going forward is going to be very different from how it was in the very recent past. We tell people we’re not a ticketing company, our goal is to build or buy interesting technologies to layer in around the ticketing transaction.

Trans World Entertainment Doubles Losses in Second Quarter

Trans World Entertainment has lost $5.1 million on revenues of $71.9 million, or 16 cents per share, for the quarter that ended Aug. 2. That loss is double the $2.54 million, or 8 cents per share, in red ink the company posted last year in the corresponding period when its revenues were $80.8 million.

Source: Billboard.com

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SoundCloud Nearing Deal with Major Labels for Pieces of Its Pie

   
By Andrew Flanagan, New York

Billboard

SoundCloud is going fully legit, with the company rumored to be selling the three major labels a 9-15% total stake, according to sources cited by Bloomberg. The deal has yet to be announced due to certain parties being closer than others in signing, Bloomberg's sources say. The deal would make it possible for the audio streaming company to continue letting its users stream music from the majors under licensing deals that would form a part of the overall deal. Two sources confirmed to Billboard that the details of the report are accurate, and that the deal will be signed imminently.

Details of the deal, including licensing rates and each major's exact ownership percentage were not available.

The three majors also hold a minority stake in streaming music service Spotify. Universal Music Group held a 14% stake in Beats Music, netting the company around $420 million following its acquisition by Apple.

Earlier this year the company was rumored to being circled by Twitter for an acquisition rumored to be $2 billion; the company's Series D funding round earlier in the year brought in $60 million, valuing the company at $700 million. Around the time of that Series D, rumors were already swirling around the majors taking a stake in the service.

SoundCloud was criticized earlier this month for its increasingly hard-line tack on copyright, though much of the controversy was business-as-usual for major content destinations like YouTube or Vimeo.

SoundCloud and Warner Music Group refused to comment on the deal. Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment did not immediately return requests for comment.

News Brief: Is Twitter Considering Buying SoundCloud?

 

 

 

 

By BACKLINE MAGAZINE Staff

 

According to Re/code, the independent tech news, reviews and analysis site, Twitter may be considering the acquisition of SoundCloud, the online audio distribution platform based in Berlin, Germany.

 

Founded in 2007 by Eric Wahlforss, and Alexander Ljung, SoundCloud enables its users to upload, record, promote and share their musical creations. In July 2013, it had 40 million registered users and 200 million listeners, and has reportedly raised $123.3 million since its launch.

 

Twitter has been courting the music community for since 2013 when it launch its #Music app in April 2013 then shutting it down it exactly one year later after it didn’t take off as expected.

 

Billboard Magazine reported Twitter’s last acquisition was the social media aggregation API company Gnip, acquired in April of this year.

 

Both Twitter and SoundCloud have declined comment at this time.