The deadline for bids on beleaguered Blinkbox Music ends 4pm BST this Thursday (June 25) – less than two weeks after it was plunged into administration by parent Guvera.
A big question mark remains over what, exactly, a successful bidder for the UK-born platform will acquire in terms of users.
Seller Metis Partners says that the new owner of BlinkBox will obtain the following:
- Established digital platform
- Intelligent behavioural learning algorithms
- Extensive and valuable behavioural data
- Loyal audience
- Attractive website content
It adds that Blinkbox, formerly owned by Tesco before Guvera snapped it up in January, boasts ‘a user base of over 3.5 million listeners’ as well as a current active monthly listener base of 370k’.
Guvera, which runs its own subscription service out of Australia, recently announced that it had reached 10m users worldwide – thought to include subs from BlinkBox.
Discussing BlinkBox’s proprietary technology, Metis Partners says:
“The Company’s software and technology has been developed by a skilled team of in-house developers. The source code has been professionally written, using an Agile development process, and software has been tested by a distinct testing team.
“Considerable R&D effort has been made in monitoring the entire user experience, along with user behaviour and track choices. Data gathered has been fed back into continuous improvement of the Blinkbox Music offering and the optimisation of the platform’s features.
“Blinkbox Music has developed advanced algorithms to enable the service to successfully create personalised music stations for users. The platform’s competitive advantages include the ability to provide tracks that have a similar mood, feel or flow to a track “liked” by the user, rather than simply suggesting a number of tracks from the same album.”
Nat Baldwin, head of corporate recovery and brokerage at Metis Partners, commented: “This is a unique opportunity to purchase the intellectual property assets of a leading music streaming service with an extensive and loyal audience. Last year, Blinkbox Music spent around £7 million on marketing, including above-the-line television advertising campaigns.
“Revenue has been generated primarily through advertisers, including retailers, who pay monthly fees to deliver adverts to all or particular targeted segments of the Blinkbox user-base. In addition, an ad-free subscription service, Blinkbox Music More, is available for a monthly fee of £1 a week. At present this service has over 3,000 paid subscribers.
“We have already received significant interest in the sale which is attractive to others in the music streaming industry, music industry, media, social media and technology organisations.”
Music Business Worldwide
