Spotify, founded by the former Tradedoubler team, is understood to have raised €15.3m from Northzone Venture Partners at a monster €71.6m pre-money valuation. The service is still in private beta.
Northzone themselves have declined to comment, but Creandum, another of Sweden’s top VCs, is also understood to have taken part in the funding round. Spotif have released no statement but they recently held a large party in Stockholm. Make of that what you will.
The Stockholm-based Spotify can essentially be summed up, in the words of one blogger, as a kind of hybrid of Skype, last.fm, the iTunes Store and Bittorrent. A lightweight iTunes-like application streams songs via encrypted P2P technology. The service is ad-financed, hence the comparison with Last.fm.
Wow, really cool. Congrats, good job.
congrats guys!
I’ve had just a couple of these extraordinary wow-experiences in my life when it comes to software and Spotify probably takes the prize so far.
The world is not enough for this Killer App!
Any chance someone can pass on an invite? I’d like to try this service
arjanth on the gmail address
I´ve trying Spotify for almost a week and it´s a fantastic service. I´ve had a good time trying out last.fm , deezer, imeem, myspace and a couple of other music-related services
since its a big interest of mine. All the these services are good, great even, but Spotify´s is just in a league of its own. Spotify is by far the best
music service available on the internet. Facebook for socialising, Google for search, Youtube for video, and Spotify for music. Simple as that.
Congrats for them. I can’t wait to see it. I’d love an invite if anyone can share. md0tbb at mac dot com
I’ve been a test user for the last year and I can only say that the software is lightning fast and the music service is a killer….
yeah!!!!!
Great news! The best right now for streaming music with huge viral potential. However they need to solve going mobile (where most growth of music consumption happens) and collaborative listening like Jango. At the same time not falling into the Joost trap with too much advertising and too bad content. Then you have a killer application… ok I admit.. which is is already…
The best thing about Spotify is the sheer speed….
I takes 3 seconds to load and I’m listening within another second.
In comparison iTunes takes 90+ seconds to load and a further 10 until I can hear anything… iTunes on a PC is bloatware.
this is great!
Spotify is a truely awsome app! Congrats guys!
thats all we need is another online music shuffler. the domain name and logo could use some plastic surgery. tiplocator-diversify and use your shuffling apps for finding small business, products and services or people.
RatingLocator.com
that financing / valuation makes absolutely no sense… Raise $20m on a $100m pre? for a pre product launch/ pre revenue company? Company has to sell for ~$500m to get a 4x? How many music companies have exited for north of $500m? $400m $300m? Last.fm, arguably one of the most sucessful music exits in the past 5 years, was $280, which would only be a mid 2x return. Am I missing something here? valuation / financing size is not commensurate with risk/return profile
I see your point. But i think its important to point out that Spotify, if we´re strictly talking about quality of the product, is a step ahead of last.fm,rhapsody, pandora, myspace, deezer, jango and others. (When you try it out I´m 110% shure you will agree). Comparing last.fm and Spotify is bit like comparing Altavista and Google.(google being spotify). Spotify is the next step of music streaming (and sharing, recommending if you like that). So is think a lot of the valuation comes from the fact that Spotify is the best music service on the internet today (and I have made comparisons..music lover that I am).
Ebay for trading stuff, Youtube for video,Google for search,Blogger for blogging, Flickr for images and Spotify for music. Being the best at what you do has to be worth something.
Spotify is the coolest service on the planet. Anything else looks ridiculous.
it looks great, P2P is where its at right now. I like sites like hulu.com and Jadsters.com too. They aren’t P2P but the quality of movies coming from like Jadsters.com is great, hulu does have a lot of TV show though. maybe one day they will open up so we can share?
Spotify is a pretty awesome app from what I gather using the beta version. Kind of like Grooveshark.com but with a much more intuitive interface. I’m just pissed that I couldn’t fly to Stockholm (from SF) for the party…to which I was invited:(
Rock on Spotify guys!!
“We’ve created a powerful, but extremely lightweight software application that users will simply download.”
Nowhere on their site could I see what platform this ‘extremely lightweight software application’ is for, so I assume it’s Windows only?
Robin, they support both Mac OS X and Windows.
Excellent news. Now I just need an invite – I’m sure they need more Mac beta testers
Anyone got an invite lying around. I’m dying to try this!
great! good app
http://gatesandjobs.blogspot.com/
Anyone got an invite
The feedback here is so enthusiastic, that I´m getting curious about the launch of spotify…
Does someone has an invite?
Spotify has now been released! It looks like its going to be a great success. More users will mean lots of sharing of playlists and recommending. Finally! Good times for music lovers!
Looks awesome, can’t wait to have a play later today
Hey! Got some Spotify invites to share. Pop over to my blog, jameskilgourblog.com, and leave a comment on my review of Spotify.
Can I get an invite, if someone happens to have a spare?
vitalik.spam [a] gmail.com
Thanks!
you sold me! translation: any chance of an invite?
Saapikos sitä suomeks kutsua.
Well sama Lontooks.
Can i get invite so i can see what i shall buy: