The administrators are looking for buyers for the technology company, with 50 core members out of a staff of 120 retained to continue business operations during this process. 

London-based Omnifone was founded in 2003 by Rob Lewis, Phil Sant and Mark Knight. Their first music product was cloud service MusicStation, which made its name powering Vodafone’s digital music service.  Since then Omnifone has developed global digital music services in 35 countries and has a licensed catalogue of 35m tracks. Customers include Spotify, Neil Young’s PonoMusic, Guvera, Rara and Sony.

The company posted a 122% compound annual growth rate in sales from 2010 to 2013, but then began to experience difficulties. The administrators said he business failed due to a combination of ongoing development and operating costs, the loss of and failure to pay by key customers, and the fact that it had exhausted the significant amounts of capital invested in it.

Andrew Duncan, director at Leonard Curtis Business Solutions Group and joint administrator, said: ‘Administration was the most viable option as it allows Omnifone to continue to trade as usual whilst we market the technology assets for sale.

‘There is a great deal of interest in Omnifone’s technology assets and their future potential and we are currently in discussions with household names within the music industry.’