Lew Dickey Company To Acquire Music Streaming Platform

Modern Media Acquisition Corp. has announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to combine with Akazoo Ltd, a global digital music streaming platform based in the United Kingdom, in a transaction that would value the combined company at approximately $469 million.

Under the definitive agreement, MMDM and Akazoo will combine under a new holding company, which intends to list on the Nasdaq Stock Market under the symbol “SONG” following completion of the transaction.

Founded in 2010, Akazoo is an on-demand music streaming subscription company with a focus on emerging markets.

Akazoo’s Premium service provides subscribers with unlimited online and offline high-quality streaming access to a catalog of over 45 million songs on a commercial-free basis. Akazoo’s free, ad-supported Radio service consists of over 100,000 stations and exists as a separate application. With a presence in 25 countries and growing, Akazoo’s platform includes 37 million registered users and 4.3 million premium subscribers as of September 30, 2018.

Lew Dickey

Akazoo directly licenses music from thousands of labels and provides both online and offline listening platforms, social media integration, and a patented, AI-driven new music recommendation engine. 

MMDM is a special purpose acquisition company formed for the purpose of effecting a merger, acquisition or similar business combination sponsored by Modern Media, LLC, an entity jointly owned by Lew Dickey, MMDM’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and an affiliate of Macquarie Capital.

The combined company will continue to be led by Akazoo’s experienced management team under the leadership of Apostolos N. Zervos, Akazoo’s Founder and Chief Executive Officer. Lew Dickey will serve as Chairman of the combined company.