Pay-as-you-go music streaming service Psonar is launching a Crowdcube investment campaign to raise at least £250K as part of its current £1m fund-raising round, of which £305K has already been raised from private investors.
Psonar has raised over £1m to date from its founders and private investors to fund the development of the service.
Currently, the service is live in beta in the UK and Ireland, with over 2.5 million tracks including Universal Music’s popular music catalogue and those of the major independent distributors. Licensing negotiations are in progress with Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music.
The funds from the current fund-raising round will be used for further product development, and to accelerate business development, in particular partnerships with mobile operators, device makers and other digital service providers both in the UK, Europe and the US as well as in developing markets.
Although still in beta, Psonar has already run a range of promotions with partners including Top of the Pops, Daily Express, Daily Star and New Look.
Martin Rigby, co-founder and CEO of Psonar, said: “In the last two years there has been a major shift in consumption of digital music, from downloading to streaming.
“Streaming growth has been focused around variations of a single payment model: subscription of £9.99 per month on mobile.
“The major limitation with this model is that it is unaffordable for many consumers in developed economies and the vast majority of consumers in developing economies.”
But Psonar offers users access to on-demand streaming music on a PAYG basis, which is affordable, flexible and gives users complete control over how much they spend.
Ricgby continued: “The investment that we are raising on Crowdcube will position the service for international expansion, which includes launching the service in other European territories and the USA at the end of this year.
“We anticipate raising a larger series A round in late 2015 or early 2016 to accelerate Psonar’s global roll-out plan. Our target territories for further expansion starting in late 2015 include sub-Saharan Africa, south-east Asia and Latin America.”