Nokia’s MixRadio is breaking off from Microsoft and becoming standalone

Nokia’s MixRadio streaming music app is spinning off as a standalone company, as part of deep cuts announced by its new parent company Microsoft. MixRadio will continue to be preloaded on smartphones running Microsoft’s Windows Phone software, but it will also have the freedom to explore other platforms like Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android. “Basically, we’re planning a spin-off,” said MixRadio chief Jyrki Rosenberg. “I’ve been meeting with potential investors around the world in the last few weeks. We have very strong interest from investors in the US, Europe and Asia, and we remain open for further discussions.” MixRadio launched in 2011 as an app called Nokia Music, preloaded on Nokia’s first Windows Phone handsets. Rather than Spotify-style “on demand” access to streaming music, the app offered a collection of themed playlists – a feature called “Mix Radio” – curated by an in-house team at Nokia. The basic app has always been free to use with no advertising: Nokia saw the app as a selling point for Lumia smartphones, rather than a direct moneymaker in its own right. In early 2013, though, the company added an option to pay £3.99 a month for better audio quality, the unlimited ability to skip tracks and cache playlists on the smartphone, and a web version to access it on non-Nokia devices. The app was also rebranded as MixRadio, after its most popular feature.