Free online platform Dash Radio announced that it had raised $8.8 million in seed funding while passing 10 million active monthly users. Dash Radio offers 400+ live shows across 75 stations, many hosted by celebrity DJ’s including Snoop Dogg, Lil Wayne and Ice Cube.
Dash Radio’s ‘secret sauce’ is a curated, personality-driven, lean back experience.
Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer and others are all battling for streaming music market share. But online radio, particularly live online radio, is a wide open sector. “It’s the wild, wild west.” founder Scott Keeney (DJ Skee) told Techcrunch. With Pandora all about algorithms and very few live DJ’s spinning on SiriusXM, Dash’s only major competitor is single-channel Beats 1, which sits behind the Apple Music paywall.
Investors in the new $8.8 million seed round include Nimble Ventures, Slow Ventures, Lazerow Ventures, Muzik, Arab Angel, G Ventures, Lindzon Capital Partners, veteran record label executive Jason Flom, Orin Snyder and Ian Schaefer. Warner Bros. chairman and CEO Kevin Tsujihara and Alibaba’s former chairman of U.S. investments Michael Zeisser are also invested and along with Passport Capital founder John Burbank are joining the Dash Radio Board.