Raditaz changed its name to CUR Media and...

Raditaz changed its name to CUR Media and completed a private placement offering of its stock, raising $9.6 million, it said Monday. The company had set out to raise $4 million to $7 million as part of the alternative public offering, said CEO Tom Brophy in a news release. It now has a “large and committed investor base,” and plans to introduce a new business model to “serve an unmet need in the streaming music industry,” he said. The company is developing CUR Music, a hybrid music streaming service for mobile devices and the Web that it said “blends the best” of Internet radio services such as Pandora with on-demand services including Spotify. CUR plans to launch its Web and mobile applications in the October-December range this year, it said. Revenue from streaming and subscription music services soared 51 percent in 2013, demonstrating “clear market demand for these offerings,” said Brophy. Despite that growth, the existing players are “challenged to continue innovating and demonstrating upside,” he said. CUR sees “significant opportunity to pick up where music innovation has left off and deliver new offerings that appeal to a broader set of music consumers,” he said. The company started testing its service in early 2012 as Raditaz, an Internet radio service for iOS and Android devices, said CUR. The company didn’t say why it changed its name and didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.