The company has had a series of high-profile partnerships with major music streams — from a lyric deal with Spotify to display context behind songs, to a built-in Apple Music player on the Genius website — and even launched its own livestreaming platform last year called Genius Live. But none of its initiatives were enough to move its valuation up in the past few years. The result is a sale that will come with job cuts.
“We are restructuring the way in which original content is produced at Genius and as part of that some very talented individuals on the content and production teams were let go,” MediaLab said in a statement to Bloomberg. MediaLab says it will invest in the “community platform” as it focuses on emerging artists for the platform.
MediaLab owns a small group of companies including the mixtape platform DatPiff, social media platform Whisper and the messaging service Kik, which was popular around a decade ago. The company says it serves over 80 million users every month across its portfolio.
Reps for Genius and MediaLab did not respond to Billboard‘s request for comment.
