Beyond Oblivion, a US-based digital music market, has raised $77m from a consortium of corporate venturing groups to buy worldwide content rights and make its commercial launch.
Wellcome Trust, a UK-based charitable foundation with £2.1bn ($3.4bn) in venture and growth capital, was joined in Beyond’s latest round by media conglomerate News Corp, investment bank Allen and Intertrust Technologies, a digital rights management company with three portfolio companies (the others are Seacert and SyncTV). Talal Shamoon from InterTrust was a director on Beyond’s board at the B round, which raised $10m in April last year from News Corp, Allen and InterTrust, according to the portfolio company’s regulatory filing.
Beyond had also raised $2m during the previous autumn.
Jon Miller, chief digital officer for News Corporation, said: "Our additional investment in this business serves as an endorsement of the progress that Beyond Oblivion has made in bringing this innovative new music product to market."
Beyond Oblivion enables music files to be downloaded and played from an online library and shared between licensed devices, such as music players, mobile phones, computers and pads, with Beyond reporting play-count to rights holders who are paid a royalty every time their music is played – whether or not the file was legally or illegally downloaded, ripped or shared.
Dan Rowe of Wm Sword advised Beyond on the latest round.