SpinMedia sale leaves uncertain future for Stereogum, Spin, Vibe and others
SpinMedia, previously Buzz Media, have finally stopped struggling to stay afloat – because they’re for sale.
SpinMedia are the company behind a large collection of music and celeb websites, such a large collection in fact that they couldn’t keep on top of them all enough to remain profitable. SpinMedia were estimated to have been losing $5 million a year at least, with revenues around $18 million.
Now the fate of music websites like Stereogum, Spin, Vibe and pop culture websites like Celebuzz, Buzznet, Go Fug Yourself and plenty more sites is uncertain as SpinMedia looks to sell it’s company. According to NYpost Univision, who recently acquired Gawker, took an interest a few months ago before reportedly completely losing that interest.
SpinMedia have a history of managing to blow away money whilst failing to make a profit. They managed to spend $125 million in equity before M/C Partners became the lead investor in 2014, after early investors equity was cleared. Since then M/C Partners have spent over $10 million on SpinMedia.
After SpinMedia purchased Vibe and Spin magazines they took away their physical business for an online only magazine. It could have been decisions like this that led to their downfall but an industry executive reckons it was their shopping sprees of businesses, saying: “They bought too many companies and did not have enough to support the brands, which just got thinner and thinner.”
The reported number of visitors to their site has over halved from the peak of over 50 million down to just 25 million last month, according to comScore.
SpinMedia are using investment bank Petsky Prunier to help them search for a buyer. It shouldn’t be too hard to find a company willing to purchase popular music news sources like Stereogum and Spin but with sites like ‘Go Fug Yourself’ in tow buyers may be less keen.