Ten days ago, I mentioned Spotify amongst the hottest European start-ups in the TechCrunch Europe Top 100.
With its recent round of funding, Spotify has been making a lot of noise and moving fast up the league. Deezer, its older, French competitor, was still just ahead in the rankings.
Today, TechCrunch reports that it's Deezer's turn to bring in the cash. AGF Private Equity and CM-CIC Capital Privé are investing €12.2m. This is considerably less than the $50m raised by Spotify recently.
The French player has been around far longer but its userbase is still mostly in France. The new cash, I imagine, will be used to develop new offerings and market itself more aggressively both at home and, especially, overseas.
The news today that BSkyB is launching Sky Songs a streaming rival to iTunes as early as next week, with all the major labels on board, means the music online distribution market is going to get nice and spicy.
