Few months ago Mary Meeker, associate for Kleiner Perkins, suggested that the sector of online sound will see a huge growth similar to online video. Kleiner Perkins is now among the new investors in the promising tech start-up SoundCloud. The firm is focusing on audio-sharing in social media and has announced a new round of $50M funding.
Kleiner Perkins partner Mary Meeker will join the SoundCloud board. GGV Capital also participated in the round, which the startup hopes to use to aid in more rapid expansion. SoundCloud’s service was first focused toward professional musicians who needed better options for sharing music online. Currently, SoundCloud is used to distribute podcasts, audiobooks and more. SoundCloud is free for most users and offers paid plans for more hardcore customers.
“SoundCloud has seen exponential growth this year in terms of users and greatly evolved our product offerings,” said SoundCloud founder and CEO Alexander Ljung in a blog post today.
SoundCloud was founded in late 2008 and has taken two previous rounds of funding totaling roughy $16 million. Previous funding came from Union Square Ventures, Index Ventures and Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures. Over the summer of 2011, SoundCloud reported it had reached the significant milestone of five million users, four million of whom joined the service within the past 12 months. The launch of mobile apps had added about a million new people to SoundCloud platform. SoundCloud is headquartered in Berlin.
TechCrunch suggests that SoundCloud has a valuation around $200M now.
Source: http://venturebeat.com/2012/01/02/soundcloud-funding/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Venturebeat+%28VentureBeat%29&utm_content=Google+Reader and
http://gigaom.com/2012/01/02/soundcloud-gets-50-million-in-new-funding/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OmMalik+%28GigaOM%3A+Tech%29&utm_content=Google+Reader and
http://eu.techcrunch.com/2012/01/02/soundcloud-raises-50-million-round-led-by-kleiner-perkins/
Louis Rhéaume
Infocom Intelligence
louis@infocomintelligence.com
Twitter: @infocomAnalysis
A blog on the convergence of info-communications industries: communications, computing, electronics, entertainment, publications and education. Strategic, technological and financial analysis. English and French blog. Cette chronique traite de l’évolution des industries de l’information et des communications et couvre des aspects stratégiques, technologiques et financiers, comme l’économie du savoir et de l’innovation. L’auteur est Associé principal de Infocom Intelligence.
No comments:
Post a Comment