A North East entrepreneur, Kieron Donoghue, has launched a social media website that is set to be the largest globally for the Spotify online music community after receiving a six figure investment from four successful internet business investors.
Sharemyplaylists.com (SMP) was developed by Sunderland based Kieron after he noticed a gap in the market to make music discovery easier for Spotify users and give them the ability to share playlists.
Spotify is an online music streaming service that allows subscribers to create their own playlists from any artist, album and genre free of charge.
After developing and launching the site and seeing it grow virally, Kieron pitched the opportunity to Steven Brown, David Brown, Malcolm Cowley and Paul Fellows - the ‘dream team’ that set up www.Buy.at from Newcastle which eventually sold for $125m to AOL in 2008 - who quickly spotted the potential of the business in the wake of other social media successes such as MySpace and Facebook.
Offering a social network so music fans can talk about their favourite artists and bands, as well as the opportunity to discover and rate other people’s music compilations, SMP already works with the major record labels and ran a promotion with Warner Music UK over Christmas to promote the latest R.E.M. album. Celebrity playlists are featured on the site from the likes of Robbie Williams, The Gorillaz, Will Young, The Saturdays, Leona Lewis, La Roux and Alicia Keys amongst others.
SMP will fund its growth through targeted online advertising sales to those wishing to reach music lovers on a national and global level.
Over 16,000 playlists are currently listed on SMP, the largest number on any site of its kind. Its success to date is such that the team are looking for new premises and to recruit full time developers.
SMP founder Kieron Donoghue has been self-employed for ten years and through running UK Offer Media Ltd and Content Now LLP has vast experience of online commerce. He said: “As a big Spotify fan, I was extremely excited by the opportunity to develop a complementary site that would further enhance the offer and just knew the concept had huge potential. Music is a real passion for many and Sharemyplaylists.com allows people to meet others with similar tastes to themselves, bringing in a real social networking element.
“Gaining the support of the former Buy.at team has been a fantastic leap forward and it’s a real privilege to have their expertise involved with the business. A key next step for me now is to use some of the investment to find new offices and get a talented and experienced workforce in place.”
Investor and ex CEO of buy.at, Steven Brown sits on the SMP board as a non-executive director and is also excited by the venture and working with both Kieron and the investment team once more.
Steven commented: “The online music sector is high growth and Spotify is a fantastic application that offers legal streaming music – a service that will quite simply become the normal way to consume music in future. Sharemyplaylists.com is brilliant in its simplicity and not only plugs a real gap and allows friends to connect through their common passion but, most importantly, is being launched at the perfect time. We have great ambitions for the business and firmly believe it has all the attributes to be tremendously successful.”
A spokesperson for Spotify added: “It is great to see Sharemyplaylists.com and the Spotify ecosystem continue to flourish. Social and sharing features are very important to Spotify and Sharemyplaylists.com has been at the forefront of playlist sharing since early on.”
What I'm listening to right now: Usher - "Raymond v Raymond"
Welcome to my blog. My name is Kieron Donoghue and I am the founder of ShareMyPlaylists.com, ContentNow.co.uk and some other stuff. I have no idea why I'm blue on this photo though but I like it!
Huge congratulations Kieron – nice one!
Congratulations Kieron
Congratulations Kieron. That’s great news, not just for SMP, but for the North East’s tech startup community.
I look forward to reading your book about the journey from starting SMP to selling for millions!
Any thoughts on how the spotify announcement today will affect your plans for SMP?
That’s fantastic news! Congratulations!
Congrats Kieron
That’s awesome news mate – Congrats!
Excellent news mate and many congratulations. Best wishes to all involved.
Congrats Kieron – happy days. Top news, and good luck.
Congrats on the seed from buy.at Kieron, i wish you loads of success with this venture
Exciting news!! Congrats! Looking forward to seeing what’s in store next…:)
Congrats Kieron
Doug
Congrats Kieron, sounds like exciting times for SMP, good luck with it all!
Nice one Sir, well done.
Expect to be hearing about SMP from lots of places going forward!
16,000 playlists??!!!!
Awesome news Kieron, congratulations! Let’s hope the best spotify playlist site keeps getting better and better!
Congratulations! This is huge news. I hope it reshapes the industry!
Pingback: New Spotify Update – Song & Playlist Sharing On Facebook
Congratulations Kieron. Great to see such a successful business adventure boom with such an exciting sector. When business is fun it’s successful!
HI Craig, the Spotify announcement is good news as far as I’m concerned. It will only broaden their appeal and usage and therefore broaden the potential SMP audience too.
One thing to consider is that the Spotify social network features only allow you to share playlists with your Facebook friends. If you don’t use Facebook then it won’t be of use. SMP allows you to share your playlists with everybody, there are no constraints.
So all said I think that SMP is well positioned to take advantage of the new features and bring playlist sharing to the masses.
Cheers!
Congratulations on the investment Kieron.
Nice one mate, it’s great to see how SMP has developed from your initial concept and continuing to grow at a brilliant rate!
Well done, look forward to hearing more about how smp is evolving
Inspirational Kieron, its been a while since we spoke! Congratulations and well done, looking forward to keeping my eye on how it goes!
Have they asked for there money back after spotify released their plans for social media allowing users to share their playlists with each other via twitter and facebook ? Surely users would always go with the inhouse branded soloution rather than sharemyplaylists?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/hi/technology/newsid_10080000/newsid_10087400/10087477.stm
Mark, I take it you didn’t read my reply to this exact same (although more polite) question above 2 days ago from Craig?
First of all, you could always share Spotify playlists via Twitter and Facebook, nothing new there. The new Spotify release now allows you to create a profile and connect to your Facebook friends and share playlists, all from within Spotify.
However it doesn’t help people who don’t use Facebook or Twitter or those who also want to keep their music tastes private. With ShareMyPlaylists you can browse through over 16,000 playlists as well as searching by artist, genre, title and rating. In other words you are not limited to browsing the playlists made public by your friends, it’s open to everybody. As well as that we will continue to other engaging content such as our Playlists Of The Month feature as well as playlists from celebrities and artists etc.
As far as myself and the investors are concerned the new Spotify Social is a welcome step. Any features that make playlist sharing easier are positive for music fans and Spotify fans alike.
Nice stuff indeed! Congrats Kieron…
Congratulations Kieron! This is awesome news! The big time has officially arrived! Please don’t forget about us
A belated congratulations – well deserved. What’s next?!
Well done on getting the investment! Just don’t put it all on black at the casino…
Well done! that’s a very good step in the right direction with a very wise business team. Steve, Malc, David and Paul we great.at building Buy.at’s books and then flipping it to AOL. I’m sure they’ll achieve the same for ShareMyPlaylists…
Congrats again
Congratulations and keep up the good work! The new social features in Spotify is good stuff for all of us in the “ecosystem”.
Regards, Patrik from Topsify.com – Top 40 charts for Spotify.
Apologies Kieron, didn’t mean to cause offense. I think I can come across as aggressive but without meaning to be so, will watch my style of writing from here on in.
Congrats Kieron on getting the support and funding!
Congrats man…
Keep it up man and move forward