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Music-focused social platform Stationhead has announced the completion of a $12 million raise that drew support from Diplo and others.
Six-year-old Stationhead, which launched on Android in March of 2021, unveiled the multimillion-dollar round this morning. The startup, which bills itself as “a social music platform for artists and fans around the world to connect, listen live, and stream together,” centers on user-hosted live radio programs that feature chat sections and support listener call-ins.
Available “across the globe,” according to its website, Stationhead requires users to stream stations’ music via their personal Spotify and Apple Music accounts. “Through Stationhead’s patented technology,” the website elaborates, “you are able to stream music directly from your Apple Music and Spotify accounts without any risk of copyright infringement.”
Specifically, Stationhead prompts fans to connect an Apple Music or (premium) Spotify profile upon navigating to one of its many stations. (Beneath the corresponding menu’s “Connect Apple Music” button is an offer for a three-month free trial to the Spotify competitor, though execs have in fact cut said trial’s length to one month.)
After the Spotify or Apple Music integration is complete, fans can listen to tracks via Stationhead itself, which includes a chatroom for each station, once again.
Back to Stationhead’s $12 million raise, Buttonwood Group Advisors and the initially mentioned Diplo led the round, which likewise drew support from Red Light Management, TMWRK, Round Hill Publishing, 300’s Kevin Liles, Atlantic’s Craig Kallman and Julie Greenwald, Avex Entertainment, and Lava Records’ Jason Flom.
Stationhead intends to use the sizable tranche “to accelerate the scale of its global platform, and invest in engineering and user experience.” Moreover, execs also took the opportunity to reveal that they had brought on Splice veteran Andrew Cornett as principal product designer.
And in a statement, co-founder and CEO Ryan Star emphasized the perceived long-term potential of his company, which higher-ups communicated has five million users and 30,000 stations across 200 nations – with “all users averaging over 2 hours per day on the platform.”
“Stationhead is the next evolution of music online. By building this with great empathy for artists and fans alike we have grown to become the preferred global platform of the new generation to consume music together. On release week, we are the heart of the action. The completion of this raise signifies Stationhead’s growing & pivotal role in the entire music ecosystem,” said Star.
Back in March, Amazon launched a live-radio app called Amp, which has inked deals with Nicki Minaj and Joe Budden. While the offering appears substantially similar to Stationhead, it doesn’t support Spotify and Apple Music integration; the Twitch owner Amazon has made clear that three copyright strikes will result in the termination of the responsible Amp host’s account.
Additionally, these hosts cannot “play more than 2 songs from the same album or more than 3 songs from the same artist in any 3-hour period” or “repeat a song more than 1 time in any 3-hour period,” among other restrictions.