We are thrilled to announce that we just closed a significant amount of Series A funding from Mangrove Capital Partners, the well-known early backer of Skype.

Jamendo allows users to listen and download for free more than 40.000 DRM-less music tracks under Creative Commons license. So far, 3 million albums have been legally downloaded from the Jamendo platform, which currently counts 500.000 unique visitors per month. Since January 2007, Jamendo offers to its artists a Revenue Share program: half of the advertising revenue are shared with the registered artists.

Laurent Kratz Founder and CEO of Jamendo commented: “We are very proud to welcome Mangrove as a new shareholder in our company. We share the same vision of the future of music. With this funding, we plan to become the undisputed global player of free music. More than a music sharing platform we are economically supporting and promoting the long tail of music. We have a proven business model where music is not only proposed for free to end consumers but we are also closing an increasing number of partnership agreements and licensing deals.”

Alongside personal pages, pictures and videos, Jamendo is the fourth pillar on which young bands, musicians and unsigned artists are relying to promote their music and image on the global scale. With a strong presence in most of Continental and Central European markets, Jamendo intends to allocate dedicated resources to manage the acceleration of traffic and content acquisition in regions like North America, Brazil, India and Russia. It will also increase the cultural diversity of both the music and the user feedbacks.

“With the aim at becoming the biggest independent music portal online, we believe Jamendo is the most appropriate and flexible answer to the current online revolution that the music industry is facing: providing unsigned artists with revenue opportunities all the while enabling the users to listen and download music for free”, said David Waroquier, of Mangrove Capital Partners.

About Jamendo
Based in Luxembourg and created by successful entrepreneurs, Jamendo is one of the largest Creative Commons music websites. Jamendo is operated by the company PeerMajor sarl founded by and Sylvain Zimmer (CTO), Laurent Kratz (CEO) and Pierre Gérard (CFO). Laurent Kratz and Pierre Gérard have already created in 2001 one of the most popular luxembourgish website www.lesfrontaliers.lu. Since mid-2005, Jamendo is promoting legal and free download via peer-to-peer networks.
Tel : + 352 26 53 421 - www.jamendo.com - contact@ jamendo.com

About Mangrove Capital Partners
Mangrove Capital Partners “Mangrove” provides venture capital with a punch to entrepreneurs looking to build world class companies. Our mission is to help turn visions into realities by providing financing,
thoughtful advice, relevant experience and deep industry relationships to our portfolio companies. Mangrove has invested in, among others, the following companies: Skype (www.skype.com), Securewave (
www.securewave.com), Dialcom Networks ( www.dialcom.com), Nimbuzz ( www.nimbuzz.com), Properazzi ( www.properazzi.com), Quintura ( www.quintura.com ), and Piczo (www.piczo.com).
To find out more about Mangrove Capital Partners, please visit www.mangrove-vc.com.

About Creative Commons
Creative Commons licenses are several copyright licenses released in 2002 by Creative Commons, a U.S. non-profit corporation founded in 2001. Creative Commons licenses are currently available in more than 30 different jurisdictions worldwide. The Creative Commons (CC) is a non-profit organization devoted to expanding the range of creative work available for others legally to build upon and share. These CC licenses, depending on the one chosen, restrict only certain rights (or none) of the work.
For general information, visit creativecommons.org.

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