Last fall, streaming music service Deezer announced it was going to go public and raise around $330 million in the process.
Deezer Replaces Its $330 Million IPO With a $110 Million Funding Round
Music is hard.
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Peter Kafka covered media and technology, and their intersection, at Vox. Many of his stories can be found in his Kafka on Media newsletter, and he also hosts the Recode Media podcast.
Then the company scrapped the offering at the last minute, blaming “market conditions.”
Those conditions must have continued: Deezer now says it has raised about $110 million in a funding round led by billionaire Len Blavatnik’s Access Industries. Deezer says it will use the new money to “increase customer acquisition efforts,” which is what it said it was going to do with the money it wanted to raise last fall.
The Paris-based company offers a subscription music service that’s similar to Spotify and Apple Music, but smaller. Deezer says it has six million subscribers, while Apple recently announced it has 10 million; last spring, Spotify said it had 20 million paid subscribers, and has since said it has been growing rapidly.
Access, which had already invested in Deezer, also owns Warner Music Group, which it bought in 2011. It had previously invested in Beats Music, the streaming music company Apple acquired.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
