Thursday, August 23, 2012

Mog, an Online Music Service, Sells Its Ad Network for $10 Million

By BEN SISARIO

Last month, half of the digital music company Mog was sold to Beats Electronics, the company behind the popular Beats by Dr. Dre headphones. Now the other half, an advertising network for music Web sites, has been sold as well.

The Townsquare Media Group, which owns 244 radio stations in small cities, as well as a collection of music Web sites, has bought Mog Music Network and will rename it Townsquare Media, the companies announced.

No price was given, but two people involved in the negotiations, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the deal was private, said the price was slightly more than $10 million.

The news was first reported on Thursday afternoon by the technology Web site AllThingsD.

Mog Music Network sells advertising for more than 1,000 music sites, and according to the company its sites reach 62 million monthly users. While it is less well known than Mog's streaming service, which offers mi llions of songs by monthly subscription and competes with Spotify and Rhapsody, the ad network generated half the revenue of the combined company.

Townsquare owns music sites like PopCrush, Ultimate Classic Rock and Taste of Country, as well as the Web pages for its radio stations, but it had no overarching online ad  network. It is expected to retain the employees of the Mog network in its offices in California, Chicago and New York.

In a statement, Steven Price, Townsquare's chief executive, said the deal “complements our high touch portfolio of radio, digital, mobile and live event assets and helps us to balance our media footprint from local-to-national.”

The deal also allows Mog's investors - Menlo Ventures and Balderton Capital, as well as Sony and Universal Music - to get back some, but not all, of $33 million they had put into the company. Beats, which is controlled by the record executive Jimmy Iovine and the hip- hop star Dr. Dre, paid $14 million for Mog's music service.

Ben Sisario writes about the music industry. Follow @sisario on Twitter.



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