Digital Radio Broadcasting Platform Dash Radio Raises $8.8 Million

By Dan Anderson ● Oct 26, 2018

Dash Radio, a digital radio broadcasting platform company, announced that it is now hitting over 10 million monthly listeners. And Dash Radio secured $8.8 million in seed funding from Nimble Ventures, Slow Ventures, Lazerow Ventures, Muzik, Arab Angel, G Ventures, and Lindzon Capital Partners. Some of the individual investors who participated in this round include Lava Records founder Jason Flom, Orin Snyder, Ian Schaefer, Warner Bros. CEO/chairman Kevin Tsujihara, and Alibaba’s chairman of US Investments Michael Zeisser.

Tsujihara, Zeisser, and Passport Capital founder and chief investment officer John Burbank were also named as board members at the company. And some of the executives that Dash Radio also recently hired include Isaac Heyman as VP Of Industry Relations and Clinton Sparks as VP of Business Development.

“With this new funding and an all-star board, Dash is now ready to aggressively expand its footprint and pursue the next stage of its growth journey,” said Dash Radio Founder Scott Keeney — who is also known as DJ Skee. “Since launch, Dash has been focused on reimagining the live audio and radio experience from the ground up to disrupt the legacy radio market with a superior listener experience. Our team has done an incredible job in building a best-in-class product, and by adding an incredible group of investors and world-class team, Dash will continue to rapidly expand and take advantage of the $45 billion per year radio market as it evolves from analog to digital.”


Photo: Dash Radio / John Burbank, Scott Keeney, Kevin Tsujihara

Dash Radio currently offers more than 400 shows across 75+ stations. Some of these programs are hosted by Lil Wayne, Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg, and Oscar De La Hoya. And Dash Radio also features special seasonal pop-up stations such as the Michael Jackson Diamond Celebration pop-up that celebrated the pop singer’s 60th birthday. NFL Hall of Famer Warren Sapp and rapper Too Short have also joined Dash Radio’s weekly programming.

And Dash Radio is able to distinguish itself from rivals like iHeartRadio by taking a different approach from long advertising stretches. According to TechCrunch, Dash Radio uses a business model that goes around the traditional insertion-based ad models. One of the most interesting sponsorships that Dash Radio has in place is with Build-A-Bear, which has a branded kids radio station on Dash. And Dash may introduce a premium plan in the future.