StrategyEye Views

Napster gets passed around again ... to BestBuy this time for $121m .. and MySpace Music fund raising

Napster has been acquired by BestBuy for $121m after a tumultuous history.

Napster began in 1999 as an illegal file-sharing site, before folding under the pressure of numerous record company lawsuits in 2002. The site re-emerged as a legal subscription service and earlier this year launched a DRM-free music download store.

Napster has been the subject of multiple rumours for some time now ... in July it was attracting the interest of hedge funds (see StrategyEye article) although of recent perhaps these funds have had more to occupy themselves ... and left the acquisition to a more mainstream offline / online retailer BestBuy.

Napster was trading at near $10 at start 2005 and fell to $1.4 at end of August, with the agreed acquisition price being $2.5 today, a decent 80% premium.

It will be interesting to see how BestBuy fares with this pioneer in the music space in light of the ongoing dominance of iTunes and seemingly inpenetrable iPod consumer mindset, not to mention a lot of deep pocketed players attempting different ways to tap into the music market.

This deal also comes interestingly on same day as the other online music announcement about MySpace planning to raise $100m for its music arm at a valuation of around $2bn ... (StrategyEye - MySpace Music set to raise $100m).

Ticketmaster to acquire majority stake in echomusic

StrategyWire view and links - Ticketmaster to acquire majority stake in echomusic

Ticketmaster will acquire a significant stake in Nashville entertainment marketing company, echomusic. The deal, which has been in the pipeline for six months, will provide echomusic with some much needed funds and allow Ticketmaster to expand its online platform. echomusic specialises in branding, digital music distribution and online campaigns, with clients such as Kelly Clarkson and the Academy of Country Music. Ticketmaster is the world's leading ticketing company providing ticket sales and resale services. The companies hope to build brand awareness, increase fan memberships and drive ticket sales for their respective clients, as well as promote further client-fan relationships. The companies will also integrate technology and resources. They are believed to be jointly examining and looking to enhance relationships with iLike and IAC properties to create further business opportunities. Future announcements on developments will follow as the integration plans are finalised between the two companies.

AOL grabs Relegence - to build new B2B strategy or just enhance AOL Finance?

AOL jumped in to purchase Relegence yesterday, an intriguing move given that AOL's focus has more recently appeared to be a shift away Access and to start seeking ways to generate more ad revenue from its consumer operations.

Immediate thoughts on this popping into my alert yesterday afternoon were that it might be part of some wonderful new strategy where AOL is looking to move into some sort of B2B application market -- a market we like at MarketClusters ;-). Relegence appeared heavily focused at doing big enterprise deals in the financial services community, and released announcements about projects with the likes of Credit Suisse where they'd create clever 'black boxes' that would seamlessly mixing together millions of external feed articles with internal equity research and the like.

AOL alternatively could be just buying Relegence more for its tech expertise rather than its projected financial services revenue streams - and using its platform as a means of improving the feeds filtering into an enhanced consumer finance section; taking on Yahoo! Finance seems like a one route they might be backing and we look forward to a bit more clarity on how this 60-man Relegence team fits in.

From StrategyWire - AOL acquires real-time financial information provider, Relegence :

"AOL has acquired real-time financial information provider, Relegance Corporation.  Financial details were not disclosed, but the deal is reported to be worth USD55-65m.  Relegance's Knowledgehub platform monitors, indexes and filters news and information published by 20,000 sources (including news wires, regulatory feeds, TV broadcasts, websites and bulletin boards).  Relegance's subscription service immediately delivers relevant information to a client's desktop.  Clients include 70 financial institutions.  AOL Consumer & Publisher executive VP, Jim Bankoff, says that the deal is designed to complement its "web services strategy, where content management for web publishing will be a critical component of delivering the best experience for our users."

Little information seems available on valuation although MarketWatch cites a couple of Israeli sources who pt the deal in the $50 to $100m range.