uPlayMe raises "multi-millions," joins pile of music services
uPlayMe, the latest in a ever growing pile of companies offering a desktop application to let you connect with people through shared tastes in music, said it has raised a “multi-million” round of funding.
The New York company uses a recommendation engine, looking at the music you’ve played and letting you contact other users who have recently played the same music. It also works for videos, including those watched on YouTube, and other digital content, such as movies and TV shows.
The music feature is like a number of other companies, from Last.fm to Mystrands and The Filter, the latter two also having a download that searches your music including your iTunes library, and a player, like uPlayMe. uPlayM offers an IM service too, so you can chat with the people you befriend. A dashboard shows the music you’re listening too, and the music being listened to by others. It lets you sample or buy the music.
To get things humming, the company says it’ll give you $10 worth of iTunes if you invite five friends to join uPlayMe.
The investment comes from Warner Music Group, a major music label, Village Ventures, and other investors. Here’s the announcement. The specific amount was undisclosed.
The company was co-founded last year by Dan Pelson, a senior vice president at Warner Music Group, and Bo Peabody, a managing general partner at Village Ventures.
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Matt launched VentureBeat in September of 2006, with the realization that no one else was covering the entrepreneurial and tech innovation scene with the velocity or depth that he was. Prior to founding VentureBeat, he covered venture capital for the San Jose Mercury News from 2001 to 2006. In 2002, Matt was awarded "Journalist of the Year" by the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists. Prior to working at the Merc, he was a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Bonn, Germany from 1995 to 1998, and a writer for the Washington Post in 1994. Matt holds a PhD in Government and an MA in German and European Studies from Georgetown University. In addition to VentureBeat, Matt is also the Executive Producer of DEMO, the leading launchpad event for emerging technologies.
