The week in music, tech and crypto: The Weeknd's startup investments, PleasrDAO/Wu-Tang and more

Music/Audio Tech Investment Dashboard

Music startup funding rounds

We’ve added 4 new rounds this week, including music stem platform Audioshake ($2M), music metaverse collaboration platform Roar Studios ($7M) and podcast production studio Audio Up ($12M).

Audioshake is the 14th tool on our list so far in the music/audio production category, which is now tied for the second most popular category on our list (behind only livestreaming). Their seed round is led by Precursor Ventures alongside Wndrco, both of which funded fellow music startup Breakr earlier this year.

Roar Studios is the fifth avatar-related startup on our list this year, and the first to combine avatars and music-production tools. The metaverse in general has been a hot topic this week — but there still seems to be a dearth of native tools that a wider range artists can use to create and collaborate in virtual environments without direct partnerships with, say, an Epic Games or Roblox. Roar potentially fills this need.

Audio Up’s investors include SiriusXM and Reservoir, both of whom are appearing on our investor list for the first time. It appears that Sirius XM is seeking to boost their access to original podcasts, a vertical they launched in late 2020, with the “first-look” deal point for Audio Up’s 30+ podcasts currently in production. The cash injection is also focused on developing more music-specific content, which makes Reservoir, a music publishing and management company, a smart partner for clearing releases and giving their copyrights to new audiences.

Music startup exits

Gramophone, a collective of agencies focused on artist and brand development, has been acquired by LiveOne, the owner of LivexLive, Podcast One, React Presents and more.

LiveOne’s acquisition will create a new business vertical for the content-forward company by providing artists an end-to-end solution to develop and grow their fanbase through their suite of products, tapping into Gramophone’s PR and digital marketing expertise to grow audiences that will follow artists from livestreams to podcasts to festivals.

While consolidation of the livestreaming sector continues, this acquisition is a notable departure from recent trends (and from our previous predictions), whereby a livestreaming platform is acquiring an artist services company, and not vice versa.

Artists on cap tables

Jack Harlow has invested in the supplement-filled beverage The Plug Drink, and The Weeknd has joined Tom Brady’s NFT marketplace Autograph.

In between the Super Bowl and the release of his upcoming album, The Weeknd has been especially busy in the music-tech sector this year. In addition to joining the board of directors for Autograph this week, where he will lead the music collectibles vertical, he also recently invested in Audio Up (mentioned above) as well as customized song start-up Songfinch.

Music Crypto Dashboard

Music NFT drops

Snoop Dogg joined the Harlem Globetrotters in an NFT Sitcom, and Boi-1da partnered with Bacardi to launch an NFT mixtape on the platform Sturdy Exchange.

Snoop Dogg is one of the more outspoken crypto enthusiasts of his celebrity stature today; he even claims to be the prolific NFT collector Cozomo de’ Medici himself. His earlier April 2021 drop on Crypto.com had amassed just under $2M — making him one of the top 10 NFT musicians by primary sales earnings, according to our crypto market update at the time.

The Boi-1da x Bacardi drop, which has already raised over $30k in sales (both fiat and ETH), features emerging Caribbean female artists with the aim to shine light on gender disparity in music. In their marketing materials, they are treating buyers as “Fanvestors,” echoing language on other NFT platforms like Royal and Republic that focus more on equity crowdfunding.

NFT platforms focused on music

Public Pressure is the 56th (!) NFT music platform to announce a launch this year.

The platform is based in Europe and is launching in collaboration with Lark Creative, High Focus and Patric Moxey (Founder and CEO of Ultra Music), with the hopes of “kickstart[ing] a new Italian Renaissance in the modern digital world.”

… But what does that actually mean? *shrug* As recently covered in our Extended Play column, most new NFT platforms claim to have a unique selling point of connecting fans directly to artists, but most haven’t demonstrated genuine differentiation from the increasing competition in the market.

Music/Creator DAOs

PleasrDAO joins the database as the new owners of the Wu-Tang Clan’s single-copy album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin.

While it might seem a little counterintuitive for a DAO to purchase a physical item, PleasrDAO’s “Chief Pleasing Officer” (!) describes Shaolin in a New York Times interview as “the original predecessor to NFTs” and “a protest against rent-seeking middlemen, and people who are taking a cut away from the artist,” an ethos widely shared by the crypto community.

This is potentially the highest-profile art acquisition made by a DAO so far, and perhaps establishes an interesting precedent for DAOs to invest in physical objects — and maybe even artists’ catalogs.

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