July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Beats Electronics has secured a $60 million investment to spin off its forthcoming streaming music service Daisy into a separate entity, the company announced today.

The music service itself  is the first attempt by former Nine Inch Nails rocker Trent Reznor, along with Beat Electronics,  to reinvent the streaming music marketplace, which Pandora, Spotify, Rdio, and a few others dominate. Daisy was first announced back in December 2012, and has since added former Topspin head Ian Rogers as its CEO.

Right now we don’t know a lot about what the service will look like. However, if Beats CEO Jimmy Iovine’s recent comments are any indication, it seems like a sure bet that Daisy will lean towards curated playlists rather than an on-demand music library or algorithm-based smart radio stations.

Daisy may also be in discussions with tech giant Apple to pair the streaming service with iTunes, according to a Reuters report that cites anonymous sources familiar with the matter. If true, the $60 million investment makes much more sense, as Apple already has a strong grip over worldwide music sales as well as the music industry itself.

The new investment was led by Access Industries, Marc Rowan, James Packer, and others. The fresh capital will allow Daisy to become an independent company, which will launch its music service in late 2013.

We’ve pasted the full press release below:

Beats Electronics, LLC (Beats), the leading audio brand co-founded by legendary artist and producer Dr. Dre and Interscope Geffen A&M Chairman Jimmy Iovine, has secured a $60 million investment led by Access Industries (the industrial group founded by Len Blavatnik), Marc Rowan, James Packer and entities affiliated with Lee M. Bass for a new music service powered by Beats, internally dubbed “Daisy”. With this new capital, “Daisy” has become a stand-alone company and is set for launch in late 2013.

“Beats was always about helping people re-discover the magic in the experience of listening to music,” said Iovine. “ Now that we are well along the way to addressing the quality of audio playback with Beats headphones and speakers, Daisy allows us to re-introduce the same magic into the process of music discovery and consumption”.

This investment group brings significant expertise in music and subscription business, complimenting and extending the advantages already bestowed upon “Daisy” from its close relationship with and initial investment from Beats.

“Beats has the vision, the brand, the management team and now the investor group to effectively change the expectations and experiences of a music subscription service,” said Len Blavatnik. “I’m looking forward to taking on this exciting challenge together.”

Earlier this year Beats announced former Topspin head Ian Rogers will be Chief Executive Officer of “Daisy” and Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor will serve as the music service’s Chief Creative Officer. In 2012 the company also purchased digital music service MOG, which will provide the foundation platform for “Daisy”.

Investment Bank Moelis & Company acted as the exclusive financial advisor and placement agent for this raise.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Iconic music man Trent Reznor’s new Beats By Dre-backed streaming music service should launch sometime late this year.

The music service, which has the girlie-sounding name Daisy, is the first attempt by Reznor to reinvent the streaming music marketplace, which Pandora, Spotify, Rdio, and a few others dominate. Reznor has a good track record when it comes to bucking the tradition music industry’s business model, having successfully sold and distributed Nine Inch Nails album Ghosts I-IV without the help of a major record label in 2008. The musician first unofficially announced that he was partnering with Beats on the new music service back in October, as VentureBeat previously reported.

While we know relatively little information about how Daisy should differ from other streaming services, Beats did provide some insight into the partnership itself in today’s announcement. Notably, Reznor is Daisy’s chief creative officer, while former Topspin head Ian Rogers is the CEO. Rogers is taking over leadership responsibilities for MOG, which Beats acquired back in July.

As for what we can expect from the new music service, Rogers offered up the following explanation for how Daisy will differ from what’s already available:

While I use and love many music services today (mostly MOG, Songza, and Pandora in my personal life), the music experience and interface hasn’t evolved all that much. In many ways it seems like we’ve spent the last fifteen years answering the basic question of “how do we make the music available” (the question Napster answered in 1999) and not “how do we find the music we love? the music we want to listen to right now?”

Rogers said he’ll continue working with the music artist promotion service Topspin under the new role of executive chairman. Beats is presumably fine with the Daisy CEO devoting some of his time to Topspin, as the company recently made a majority stake in the startup, according to Rogers.

Via The Verge