The week in music, tech and crypto: NFT ticketing, link-in-bio consolidation and the crypto/gaming opportunity
Music/Audio Tech Investment Dashboard
Music startup funding rounds: Audio advertising expands
Music startup funding rounds: We’ve added 2 new rounds this past week, including mobile advertising startup Audiomob ($14M) and NFT ticketing platform Afterparty ($3M).
Mobile advertising startup AudioMob’s Series A, which puts the company’s total valuation at around $100M, was led by Makers Fund and Lightspeed Ventures, alongside previous investors Sequoia and Google. The news comes shortly after widespread press of rapper Nas successfully utilizing the platform to promote his 14th studio album King’s Disease II. Earlier this year, both Google and Lightspeed Ventures funded Cameo, while Sequoia Capital funded social podcast company Callin.
- This is the second instance of an audio advertising company in our funding database, following Instreamatic earlier this year — though the approach this time around differs: Where Instreamatic advertises over music and podcasts, AudioMob delivers promotional messages on top of gaming and video unobtrusively, a format that the company touts as highly preferred by gamers.
Exits: More link-in-bio consolidation, plus Spotify’s continued expansion into audiobooks
We’ve added 2 exits to the database this week, including Spotify’s acquisition of Findaway and Linkfire’s acquisition of SmartURL.
With the acquisition of Findaway, an audiobook distribution & creative services company, Spotify is now a de facto bookseller and publisher. The acquisition will bring audiobooks to Spotify users, another cross off the checklist to in their mission to be the all-in-one provider for all things audio. Other top DSPs happen to offer audiobooks, though likely not as partnered to their music streaming initiatives and more in line with their adjacent commercial sales — i.e. purchased alongside e-books or physical copies (especially in the case of Amazon).
- Findaway marks the third acquisition by Spotify in our database this year; previous acquisitions include livestreaming & virtual events company Betty Labs and podcast discovery platform Podz. Spotify now makes up half of all DSP acquisitions in our database this year, followed by Amazon and Apple with one each.
- Notably, this is not the first time Spotify has experimented with longer-form audio formats like audiobooks on its platform. Back in 2018, the streaming platform piloted a new audiovisual content format known as “Spotlight,” featuring partners including BuzzFeed, Cheddar and Daniel Ek’s wife Sofia. But timing is everything, and the frothiness of the podcast market in the last few years has created new opportunities for audiobook-related ventures and exits. Storytel, an audiobook company headquartered in the same city as Spotify (Stockholm), also announced an acquisition this week.
Stockholm based Linkfire (traded publicly on the Nasdaq First North Premier Growth Market in Stockholm as of this June) has acquired US company SmartURL in a major consolidation of the smart-link and “link-in-bio” market. The move intends to strengthen the parent company’s position in servicing DSPs, bigger distributors, larger independents and major labels, with Linkfire taking over SmartURL’s operations & clients.
- In one of our Discord digests back in June, we discussed how native app integration tools for creators, like TikTok Jump, could potentially cut into the business opportunity for the rising number of “link-in-bio” startups like Koji, Beacons, Jemi, Snipfeed and Milkshake, which essentially exist as middlemen to help creators and influencers escape the restrictions that many social media platforms place on linking out to external sites. This Linkfire news suggests that this rising competition from big-tech companies could be driving further consolidation in the link-in-bio world.
- It will be interesting to see how and when the link-in-bio market develops to optimize for Web3 — whereby decentralization impacts not only creators’ social presences, but also the underlying infrastructure they use to manage this distributed audience. This is where alternative Web3-native link-in-bio options like Namebase, as well as ENS domains (a hot topic in our #web3 channel last week with the ENS airdrop), can potentially fill in the gap left by Web2 consolidation.
Adjacent rounds: Blockchain gaming on the rise
Blockchain gaming platform Forte has raised a $725M Series B round led by Sea Capital and Kora, alongside a suite of investors including Warner Music Group, Animonica Brands, Solana Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz.
Forte distinguishes itself as a “behind-the-scenes” blockchain game platform, enabling companies to create games that are both compliant and interoperable, while freeing up developers to focus on creation and overall help ease the transition of gaming to Web3 infrastructure. The early success and heavy funding after only two years in operation may be a sign that game developers may very well now be considered an expanded addition to the “creator economy” umbrella.
Notably, this is the second-highest gaming/esports related round we’ve tracked this year, after Epic Games’ billion-dollar round in May — and the highest blockchain/crypto-related round we’ve tracked this year, with Dapper Labs coming in second ($555M). In addition, Warner Music Group’s other strategic investments for this year include several gaming companies like Roblox, Overwolf and Wave — pushing WMG to become by far the top major-label investor in gaming companies.
Music Crypto Dashboard
Music NFT platforms: More momentum in NFT ticketing
This week we’ve added 2 new NFT ticketing platforms to the database, Afterparty and ClubMylo.
While announcements of NFT platforms seems to have slowed after the peaks of September and October, a clear trend is the increase of NFT-ticketing related offerings, with 4 new ticketing companies added in the past 2 weeks. This past week, Afterparty and Club Mylo appeared on our radar; both tackling ticketing with different approaches that distinguish themselves from other platforms we’ve seen as of late.
Afterparty, which beta launched in August, has raised $3M in seed funding and is led by former Disney exec David Fields. The round was led by Acrew Capital and TenOneTen, with participation from others including artist management company Red Light Management. Rather than use NFTs as tickets, the platform mandates that attendees own specific amounts of an artists’ personal tokens, plus their own Afterparty cryptocurrency. Beta events have been held with Bryce Hall and Echosmith, and upcoming events are scheduled for Bored Ape Yacht Club (Kingship, anyone?) and art project Young & Sick.
In contrast, ClubMylo appears to be more focused on the platform token than the actual artists whom it will grant event access to. Interestingly, the press release is one of the first that we’ve seen NOT mention the mission of improving the artist-fan connection. The group offers 4 tiers of NFT tickets that will serve as access, and presumably funding, for exclusive events for ticket holders — perhaps angling for part Soho House, part Magnises.
Music NFT drops: Money Man’s perk-filled album NFT collection
We’ve added 2 new drops, including Money Man’s crypto-inspired Blockchain album and generative music service Mubert’s artist-powered collaborations.
Money Man — who was the first artist to receive an advance completely in Bitcoin from distribution and label-services company Empire — launched an NFT collection of his upcoming album trailer and sold out all 500 available pieces, which gave holders access to perks including merch discounts, early previews of upcoming music and a private chat with the artist. As we continue our research around fan experience and sentiment surrounding music-crypto, it’s clear that a successful NFT drop is tied to both the artist and fan bases’ prior knowledge and involvement in NFTs and Web3.
*By popular demand, we changed the name of the #metaverse channel in our members-only Discord server to #hyperverse to maintain our sense of dignity, and are honoring that name change here.
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