* Company secures additional financing of USD 77m from Wellcome Trust and News Corp for global launch
* The commercial advantages of a fair and transparent recorded music marketplace: Adam Kidron
MUMBAI: Beyond Oblivion, a new digital music marketplace that enables the social distribution of pay-wall free music between licensed devices, has secured US $77 million in additional financing, it was announced on Tuesday, 8th March, 2011. The investment provides Beyond Oblivion with financial backing to secure worldwide content rights, deploy a robust global delivery infrastructure and market commercial launch.
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Participants in this round include Wellcome Trust and News Corporation. Existing investors include News Corporation, Allen & Company and Intertrust Technologies. Dan Rowe of Wm Sword & Co. advised the company on the transaction.
Beyond Oblivion enables music files to be downloaded and played from a library and shared freely between licensed devices such as music players, mobile phones, computers and pads. Acknowledging that the value of a digital music file is in how many times it is played and not the initial download, Beyond reports play-count to rights holders who are paid a royalty every time their music is played – whether or not the file was legally or illegally been downloaded, ripped or shared.
Adam Kidron, Founder and CEO, Beyond Oblivion, said, Wellcome Trust’s investment in Beyond Oblivion is an important waypoint as we prepare the Beyond Marketplace for launch. This announcement will be followed by others as leading device manufactures, network operators, consumer brands and investors seek the commercial advantages of a fair and transparent recorded music marketplace….
On plans for South East Asia, Kidron said he hopes to usher in the service in the region in stages, beginning with India and Malaysia, where a public announcement will be made around August this year. This will be preceded by a beta launch in both countries. India and Malaysia will, in fact, see the service launched even before the US and Europe. Says Kidron, I’d say we expect to launch with around 500 million dollars of global guarantees… The launch in Europe and US is expected to happen soon after Malaysia and India.
Jon Miller, Chief Digital Officer, News Corporation said, Our additional investment in this business serves as an endorsement of the progress that Beyond Oblivion has made in bringing this innovative new music product to the market….
