Mobile appNov 9
Spotify-Powered Music Alarm Clock App for iPhone
An iPhone alarm clock that wakes people to Spotify music, earning half its revenue from subscriptions and half from streaming royalties. Both halves likely lean on Spotify.
- Ask
- $1.8M
- Profit
- $501K
- Multiple
- 3.6x
- Ask
- $1.8M
- Revenue
- $556K
- Profit
- $501K
- Margin
- 90%
- Multiple
- 3.6x
- Age
- 7 yrs (2019)
How it rates
ValuationFair
Similar mobile apps we've tracked mostly ask 2.7–4.9x profit, or 2.3–5.0x adjusted for its higher risk and its size; this one asks 3.6x.
Durability
7 years old but flat and iPhone-only, and built on Spotify, which likely also drives its royalty income.
Hands-off
The listing reports no development costs and a team of 2 to 20, but doesn't state owner hours.
Why it's interesting
- Profitable in every month, with $45.3K profit on $50.3K revenue last month.
- Subscription revenue grew 37% over the last 12 months, reaching a record $29K last month.
- The seller says paid ads return about 8 times their cost.
- 4.2-star App Store rating and 50K to 100K monthly active users; founded March 2019.
- Listed under Acquire's in-house M&A advisory, with P&L documents in the data room.
What to watch
- The core feature needs Spotify access, so a change to Spotify's developer terms could break the product.
- Overall growth is 0% while subscriptions grew 37%, which suggests royalty and publishing income fell.
- Half the revenue is music royalties and publishing rights, which is unusual for an alarm app, and the listing doesn't say where it comes from.
- Some figures don't line up: the broker gives 83% net margins but the figures show about 90%, and 35.6K downloads appears both as a lifetime total and as a monthly number.
- It runs only on iPhone and iPad, so it depends entirely on Apple's App Store.
Ask the seller
- What earns the streaming royalties and publishing revenue, which platforms pay it, and what has it been each month for the past 24 months?
- Which level of Spotify developer access does the app use, and has Spotify ever reviewed, limited or threatened it?
- What were monthly downloads, paying subscribers and ad spend over the past 24 months, and who does the day-to-day work?
Growth plays
- Build an Android version, since the app is Swift-only and Spotify has a large Android user base.
- Add Apple Music through MusicKit as a second wake-up source to reduce reliance on Spotify.
- Test Apple Search Ads on wake-up and music alarm keywords, if the claimed 8x return on ad spend holds up.
Nov 9Added to Acumen Wire