Music discovery platform MyStrands has closed a Series B round of $25million led by Antonio Asensio, CEO of Grupo Zeta, Spain’s third largest media group, along with existing investors Debaeque and Sequal.
MyStrands delivers a product that although sharing similarities to Last.fm, also extends to the desktop with the inclusion of locally stored music in its recommendation equation.
CEO Francisco Martin said that the company was committed to remaining independent and that the funding will help the company continue in developing its product.
MyStrands has struggled against competitors such as Last.fm, iLike and Pandora. It’s a difficult market to crack that hasn’t been helped by a name change from MusicStrands along the way. Having said that, MyStrands is a decent offering; the platform hooks nicely into iTunes and recommends music as you’re playing songs in a seamless fashion. $25million isn’t a small figure, I’m sure the company will put it to good use.
Check out MyStrands’ profile.
MyStrands does look like a promising company.
Online users sometimes want their music offline.
They will increase their competitive advantage
if they continue to align themselves with the likes of Apple and others
in the online music delivery business.
yes, agree i’m sure they will, did you see WSJ story this morning on the industry?
Big congrats to the MyStrands crew, they are doing some really interesting things. Can’t wait to see what they do with a flush of cash.
amazing / the amount of money - 25 million
amazing / how short amount of time to spend (probably 3 years)
- this space is expensive
MyStrands better provide a model that allows for users to stream entire albums for free if they plan on competing with Last.fm. Otherwise they are already doomed with their poser name and the unfortunate reality that Last.fm is just 100x cooler. “Party like never before!” (LOL!)
You can listen to full albums in record stores for free without purchasing the album. It is inevitable that we will be able to do the same online very soon without any fees. The first online music hub that successfully implements this might just have a chance.
I tried Lala.com and was extremely disappointed due to the amount of bugs and annoyances. I wasn’t able to stream anything after the first week. “This playlist is not playable at this time…” That really annoying voice haunts me in my sleep.
I really like the new Company Profile page!
I downloaded this program, and it was NOT user-friendly. Complex installation, that relies on resource hog applications (i.e. Windows Media Player, Winamp, etc.) and ridiculous four-button GUI. How do you use this thing?
By the time I figured it out, I was so upset I un-installed immediately.
Last.fm has it beat - and Pandora with its Music Genome Project is miles ahead in predicting listener interests.
Can we have the slowdown already… so some real companies can emerge, this is getting ridiculous.
I like the fact that it ties into your locally stored music…Too bad I’m not a big audiophile or I’d check them out.
test
This is a great service and the kind of functionality it has on the mobile makes it an essential piece of code!
I agree, it’s a difficult space and last.fm is a far cooler offering. I do wonder how MyStrands are going to differentiate. This kind of money does seem to be flying at companies in this space - I think it was only last week that Slacker got their series b funding of $40m odd.
I’m more excited by Peter Gabriel’s ‘The Filter’. They aren’t trying to go down the last.fm route and it integrates with iTunes a lot better.