The parent company of MySpace is trying to raise $50 million in order to re-launch MySpace as a direct competitor to Spotify and Pandora in 2013.
This is according to documents obtained by Business Insider, which we have included in this post.
Six years after buying MySpace for $580 million, News Corp sold it last summer to a company called Specific Media for $35 million.
Specific Media, a private company owned mostly by the Vanderhook family, changed its name to Interactive Media Holdings and took new funding from investors including Justin Timberlake.
Then, Interactive launched a re-designed MySpace to a surprising amount of critical praise.
Since December 2011, MySpace traffic is up 36 percent.
But MySpace continues to flounder commercially. Documents show that it will generate revenues of just $15 million this year, up from a miserable $9 million in 2011. MySpace lost more than $40 million in 2012. Interactive Media expects it to lose another $25 million next year.
Meanwhile, Interactive's other big property, Specific Media, took a hit as ad buyers turned to real-time bidding solutions over traditional ad networks. Revenues declined from $42 million in 2011 to a projected $35 million in 2012 — both down from a high of $60 million in 2010.
Now, Interactive Media holdings is out looking for another $50 million in funding.
