In early July we reported exclusively that Spotify community and playlist sharing site Playlists.net was in acquisition talks, with one suitor — a prominent music industry company — in the lead. Well, today comes official confirmation that the UK startup has indeed been acquired by WEA, the artist and label services company owned by major record label Warner Music Group. Terms of the deal remain undisclosed.
According to the official announcement, Playlists.net will continue to operate as a stand-alone company based in Newcastle, England and run by founder and CEO Kieron Donoghue.
In a statement, Donoghue says: “We were approached by WEA earlier in the year to discuss ways in which we could collaborate and it became apparent that there was much to be gained by us joining forces. What’s really exciting is that WEA have committed to support Playlists.net as an independent platform, invest in its future and grow the team to take advantage of new opportunities in the streaming ecosystem. There is a huge appetite in WEA to further embrace streaming, develop new concepts and really innovate in this growing sector.”
Founded in 2009, Playlists.net had raised a rather modest £600,000 from various private backers, including Mark Pearson (Markco Media), and Steve Brown, Dave Brown, Malcolm Cowley and Paul Fellows (the original team behind www.Buy.at, which in 2008 was sold to AOL for $125m and subsequently offloaded to Digital Window.)
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