Mangrove invests in Jamendo music portal

Jamendo (www.jamendo.com) announced it has received significant funds in the first round of financing from the investment fund Mangrove Capital Partners, known for its investments in Skype and Quintura .

Jamendo allows users to listen and download for free over 40,000 audio recordings without copy protection under a Creative Commons license. Already 3 million albums have been legally downloaded from Jamendo with monthly traffic of 500,000 unique visitors. Since January 2007, the service has been offering its performers a program for splitting advertising revenue, half of which goes to them.

“We are pleased to welcome Mangrove as a new shareholder in our company. We have the same vision of the music of the future ... With these investments, we plan to become the undisputed player in the global free music market. Even more than a music sharing portal, we economically support and promote music in perspective. We do not just have a proven business model for which music is offered to end users for free, but enter into more and more partnership agreements and licensing deals, ”commented Laurent Kratz, founder and CEO of Jamendo.”

Already today, the service offers listeners to familiarize themselves with the work of more than a dozen young Russian performers working in different styles. And invites talented musicians to popularize their music with the help of Jamendo services. Already having a strong influence on most markets in continental and Central Europe, Jamendo intends to distribute the allocated resources to increase traffic and content acquisition in the countries of North America, Brazil and Russia. It will also increase the cultural diversity of both music and user response.