Streaming Music Service ‘Daisy’ Raises $60 Million, Spins Out Of Beats Electronics As Standalone Firm

Project ‘Daisy,’ the streaming music service built internally by headphone and speaker maker Beats Electronics, has received a $60 million investment round that it is using to spin out as a standalone company.

The news was announced in a written release from Beats, confirming a report on the funding by the Verge’s Greg Sandoval issued earlier in the evening (the Verge’s report did not include the spin-out.) Daisy, which is still being referred to in press materials as the internal code name for the project, is now set to launch in “late 2013,” according to Beats.

The $60 million funding round was led by billionaire Len Blavatnik’s Access Industries along with Marc Rowan, James Packer and entities affiliated with Lee M. Bass. According to Beats, these investors bring “significant expertise in music and subscription business.”

Daisy has been growing quietly for a while, and many details on the project are still hard to come by, but it has some big names involved with it. Of course Beats’ co-founders Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine are heavy-hitters to begin with, but also teaming up specifically on Daisy is Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor, an electronic music visionary who serves as the project’s Chief Creative Officer (Daisy was first teased in a big way in an in-depth profile of Reznor published in the New Yorker magazine.) Then, earlier this year it was announced that Daisy’s CEO would be Topspin founder and music industry vet Ian Rogers.

Beats’ $14 million acquisition of digital music service MOG last year was also part of the Daisy project, and those assets will go along with it in the spin out.

But more than anything, this newest funding round seems to show how serious Daisy is about building something big. With incumbent streaming services such as Pandora, Rdio, and Spotify standing as pretty solid competitors in the space, and Google’s YouTube reportedly also looking to add a new entry into the ring, this financial and industry support will certainly come in handy as Daisy works to establish itself.

Image of daisies courtesy of Flickr user rerod via Creative Commons license