Movieclips Picks Up $18.5M From US Venture Partners, Rebrands As Zefr To Tackle Music, Sports, And TV

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Los Angeles-based Movieclips has done well for itself by, um, clipping movies into bite-sized clips that viewers love. But there’s a whole bigger world of content out there, and it plans to tackle it with a whole new brand and $18.5 million in new funding.

Movieclips was founded in 2009 with the idea of making memorable film moments available to fans, and helping studio partners monetize them. Since then, it has partnered with six major Hollywood studios and licensed their content to create and distribute clips from full-length movies.

Over the past few years, Movieclips has used its own clipping and tagging technology to look for popular moments create more than 25,000 clips that viewers can access on its own site, as well as its popular YouTube channel. Launched just ten months ago, it’s quickly shot up the comScore YouTube charts, and Movieclips now sees more than 600 million monthly views, with more than 3 billion total views since being founded.

With that challenge completed, the company plans to extend beyond the movie business, and also add content in the TV, music, and sports categories. To do so, it’s rebranding as Zefr, and will be adding clips from these new categories as well.

It’s also picked up new funding along the way. It’s raised $18.5 million in a Series C financing round led by U.S. Venture Partners, with participation from existing investors MK Capital, Shasta Ventures, SoftTech VC, First Round Capital, Richmond Park Partners, and Machinima CEO Allen DeBevoise. Along with the infusion of new cash, John Hadl of U.S. Venture Partners will join the board.

The company says the funding will be used to “drive the company’s rapid growth in its new music, sports and television verticals, expand internationally and invest in new technology.” I’ve reached out to the founders, who are generally good guys, and will update the post with more when I hear back.

Launched in December 2009, MOVIECLIPS.com is an online video destination offering audiences the largest and most diverse collection of movie scenes. MOVIECLIPS.com allows fans to find, watch and share more than 12,000 movie clips from the libraries of most major Hollywood studios. Each clip is tagged with up to 1,000 pieces of data (dialogue, actor, director, action, mood, etc) to make the most searchable collection of movie scenes on the web.

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European Music Streaming Service Deezer Heads to Asia; Partners With Telco dTac In Thailand

Steve O’Hear is probably best known as a technology journalist, currently at TechCrunch where he focuses mainly on European/UK startups, companies and products. From April 2011 to February 2012, he was co-founder and CEO of expertise platform Beepl where he helped the company navigate its first VC round, along with seeing the product through development, private alpha and a high... ? Learn More

European music streaming service Deezer is expanding to Asia. It’s announced that it will roll out in Thailand this week, with Singapore and Malaysia to follow shortly. In addition, Indonesia and the Philippines are expected “within the coming weeks”.

Of note, it’s Thailand launch is in partnership with dTac, one of the region’s leading telecommunications operators. This sees Deezer replicate a model it’s tried elsewhere which has already seen it partner with telcos Orange, T-Mobile and Belgacom in Europe. Competitor Spotify has tried similar telco tie-ups but doesn’t appear to be pursuing these quite so aggressively. It’s also yet to launch in Asia, although the hiring of ex-Googler, Dan Brody, as Spotify’s General Manager Asia-Pacific, nearly a year ago, suggests it still has plans to do so.

Deezer offers more than 18 million tracks for streaming through dedicated apps for iOS, Android, and Blackberry, along with a browser-based version that plays well with laptops and tablets, and support for various wireless Hi-Fi speakers. It also has an open API where developers can build apps based on Deezer’s features.

To state the obvious, the opportunity and challenge in Asia is pretty huge as the music industry struggles to wean users off of music piracy in the region. But conversely, smartphone penetration and high speed broadband availability in some parts of the region is extremely high too. Therefore, the idea of music being accessible anytime and on any device via the cloud is particularly tangible in lots of parts of Asia, as is the appetite.

One thing is clear, too. For a European tech company, Deezer really is thinking global. After today, it now claims a presence in 91 territories worldwide. That said, it’s yet to launch in the U.S., and apparently has no plans to do so.

Launch Date: September 18, 1996

Deezer is a International leader in the streaming industry. It is a 100% web-based solution, instantly accessible with no need to download any software. This allows consumers to listen to music on any device (smartphones, tablets, TV, Cars…), at any time and anywhere, connected or not. With 18 million licensed tracks, and more than 30.000 SmartRadio channels, Deezer is set to become the number one destination for all music fans. Deezer is simple, intuitive and responds to fans...

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Spotify has created a lightweight software application that allows instant listening to specific tracks or albums with virtually no buffering delay. It was launched in the fall of 2008 and had approximately 10 million users by September 2010. Spotify offers streaming music from major and independent record labels including Sony, EMI, Warner Music Group, and Universal. Users download Spotify and then log onto their service enabling the on-demand streaming of music. Music can be browsed by artist, album, record...

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