British streaming service Mixcloud released its 2018 financial results. There was both good news and bad news.
While Mixcloud reported strong revenue growth, it came at a cost.
For the year, Mixcloud earned around £2.4 million (about $3.1 million), which represents a more than 45% increase over the previous year’s results. In 2017, Mixcloud earned £1.68 million ($2.2 million).
On the downside, losses more than tripled, from £885,000 in 2017 to more than £3.0 million ($3.85 million) in the latest year.
The reason for this is that the company’s administrative expenses rose dramatically, from a little more than £1 million ($1.28 million) to more than £4 million ($5.1 million), while their costs of sales also grew, from £1.4 million ($1.8 million) to £1.8 million ($2.3 million).
Another piece of good news for the company is that net assets have increased considerably over the previous year.
While Mixcloud started the year with £1.35 million ($1.7 million), they ended the year with £5.5 million ($7 million).
Despite the rockiness, Mixcloud believes that they have “adequate resources” to both run their operations and meet existing liabilities “for the foreseeable future.” Driving this belief is the funding that the company received in April of 2018. WndrCo, which is a U.S. media group, reportedly invested $11.5 million in Mixcloud.
Originally, the company operated under the same kind of blanket licensing agreement that radio stations use. But in recent years, it has signed direct licensing contracts with big players in the industry. In October of 2017, Mixcloud signed an agreement with Warner Music Group. It followed this with an agreement with Universal Music a year later, which was closely followed by a Merlin pact.
One month after Mixcloud signed its agreement with Merlin, they announced that channels and creators operating on their platform could charge users a monthly subscription. This past July, the company also launched a premium subscription service and placed limits on their free service.