Flickr/DuncanTesco is not having a very nice time right now.Tesco, Britian's biggest supermarket is about to take another big hit after a horrible 2014: the retailer will soon sell music streaming service Blinkbox Music for "a fraction" of the £12 million it paid for it in 2012, The Financial Times reports.
The sale, the FT says, will be even less than the £5 million sum it got from TalkTalk last week for sail of movie streaming service Blinkbox Movies. It's yet another nail in Tesco's digital coffin, as the grocer continues to step away from ventures outside the food industry to focus on its struggling core supermarket arm.
Tesco will sell Blinkbox Music to Guvera, an Australian company that runs an online music streaming service throughout Asia. The outfit is a competitor of Spotify and Pandora and will no doubt be better placed to push it forward.
Both Guvera and Blinkbox Music let users listen to free music. Revenues come from advertising, working in a similar way to radio broadcasting. Like Spotify, people can pay to subscribe to a premium service without adverts.
Guvera's pending acquisition comes as it looks to expand into Europe. Blinkbox Music has around 1 million users, making it one of the more popular streaming sites in the
But for Tesco it was a failed venture. When the supermarket bought it from We7 it had bold ambitions and rebranded it as Blinkbox. Tesco invested millions into it over the last two years. However, the FT writes that is made a loss of £4.5 million on a turnover of just £300,000 in the year to February 2013.
Tesco apparently refused to comment on the sale and no set price has been disclosed.