A music service most people haven’t heard of, and which closed last fall, gets $10M in funding

CUR slogan 250wRaditaz, a now-defunct music service which closed in November, has raised $9.6-million for a relaunch effort, in a financial maneuver that GigaOM calls “a reverse merger, resulting in an alternative IPO.”

The goal is to re-brand and re-launch as CUR Music, whose preliminary marketing proclaims, “Where No Other Music App Has Gone Before.”

Raditaz was an Internet listening service with distinctive features such as user-generated tags for playlists (similar to user-tagging at 8tracks). The platform incorporated a hyperlocal element, striving to create neighborhood-related stations.

In a forward-looking closing announcement, Raditaz said “We’re Going Underground,” and promised to return, with the assurance: “Trust us. It’ll be worth it.”

The new site offers no clues to the nature of its worthiness, but GigaOM reports that “it will be positioned in between personalized radio services like Pandora and fully-fledged on-demand music services like Spotify.” The site quotes the service CEO, Tom Brophy: ““The world is moving towards access versus ownership.” Right … we’re not sure that insight is worth $9.6-million, but but eagerly await whatever is in the works. Launch is promised for the fall of this year.

 

Brad Hill