SAN FRANCISCO � Online radio company�TuneIn�raised $50 million to fund its growing portfolio of programming for a �paid service that rivals Sirius XM Holdings Inc., the dominant player in satellite radio,� according to this article from�Bloomberg. The deal values TuneIn at about $500 million. The company is based in San Francisco and was founded in 2002.
TuneIn offers thousands of radio stations on-demand for free to more than 75 million users. In addition to talk radio, sports and music, users can hear offerings that are unique to TuneIn, such as a temporary station for the Outside Lands music festival.
TuneIn will use the money to pay for rights to live sporting events and original programming like podcasts and music shows. Paying subscribers can listen to live streams of games from major U.S. sports leagues, as well as foreign sports. About two-thirds of TuneIn users connect from outside the U.S.
Most news, sports and talk radio is still consumed via terrestrial or satellite radio in the car, but a new group of consumers wants to listen to shows using their phone or connected home device, such as the Amazon Echo, according to Kevin Straley, TuneIn�s chief content officer and former XM Satellite executive. �There�s an influx of new listeners that are using new devices to consume audio, and we want to be serving the best packaging of content for them,� quoted in the same article. �
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