It’s billed as a “streaming music experience that intersects Pandora and Spotify” – and has reportedly been backed by more than $10m in funding.
But today, all does not seem quite right at CÜR Media.
Alarm bells started ringing on Monday (August 15) when the company failed to file its quarterly 10-Q SEC filing for the three months to end of June.
CÜR blamed “unreasonable effort or expense” for the delay, reasoning that it needed “additional time to complete certain disclosures and analyses”.
Today, an employee of the company has alleged to MBW that CÜR staff have been told to look for other jobs.
We’ve also spotted that one senior figure at the firm, Music Technology Director Mark Edwards, has suggested on his public resume that CÜR is ‘no longer operating’.
Edwards is now a free agent.
UPDATE: Subsequent to MBW posting this story, CÜR Media has announced via an SEC filing that Sanjan Dhody has resigned as a member of the company’s Board of Directors.
Dhody replaced John Lack on CÜR’s Board Of Directors in September 2015. As a result of Dhody’s departure, CÜR appears at risk of breaching SEC rules.
“We now have no directors that would qualify as “independent” as that term is defined by Nasdaq… or that meet the independence requirements contemplated by Rule 10A-3 under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended,” admitted CÜR.
Earlier this year, it was revealed that CÜR Media had agreed to pay $8m for licensing deals with Universal, Sony and Warner by January 31.
However, subsequent financial updates from the company showed that it missed this deadline.
In April, we learned that CÜR had raised $2m in a fresh round of funding, and had paid $500,000 towards the agreed $8m advance.
CÜR announced to investors that it had until June 15 to hand over the rest of the money to labels
Inevitably, question marks now surround the future of CÜR Media interim CEO Jim Urie – the former President and CEO of Universal Music Group Distribution who joined the company in May.
Urie has described his objective at CÜR as to “turn around… a struggling public company entering the streaming music space”.
One source has told MBW that Urie (pictured) resigned from CÜR earlier this month.
Having failed to verify this fact with key partners and Urie himself, we did the sensible thing and asked CÜR Media direct.
Well, first we asked its publicly-advertised investor relations agent Ascendant Partners, LLC – where the very helpful Fred Sommer told us: “We do not represent [CÜR] at the moment.”
Then we asked CÜR Media direct. Or tried to.
We’ve now called the switchboard of the company’s Connecticut HQ no less than ten times over the course of five hours.
Guess what? No answer.
According to a voicemail, they’re ‘currently away from the phone’.
We have, however, received two unattributed replies from emails to the company’s info@curmusic.com address.
Slightly bizarrely, these replies have come from a Gmail address.
CÜR has declined to comment on the exit of staff, or the future of the business with or without Jim Urie.
A spokesperson has simply told us – twice – to “check your sources carefully”.
We’ve really, really tried.
We just called you again.
No answer.Music Business Worldwide
