The week in music, tech and crypto: UnitedMasters' new cash, new music DAOs and more

Music/Audio Tech Investment Dashboard

Music startup funding rounds

We’ve added 5 new rounds this week, including booking platform Muso ($2M), artist social network Vampr ($440K), “Music3”-focused Moda DAO ($5M) and independent music-distribution platform UnitedMasters ($50M).

Muso, who had previously raised $1.5M in a 2019 seed round, plans to use the funding to expand outside of Australia and into New Zealand, the UK and beyond. Last time we covered them for our database of startups trying to “disrupt” booking agents, Muso was focused on building a marketplace for emerging musicians to find live gigs. Partially due to the pandemic, they’ve since pivoted into a more holistic platform for venues, booking agents, and artists to manage the nitty-gritty admin of live performances, including payment and automated promotion.

This will be the 6th addition to our database this year around live music/event booking or event management, in comparison to the 16 “livestreaming and virtual events” companies currently on the same list. Such a gap underscores that most investor action in live music these days focuses on virtual spaces, leaving live companies that solve more traditional-industry workflow problems a little further behind.

UnitedMasters’ latest round, led by Andreessen Horowitz, values the former at $550M. The distributor had just raised another $50M round led by Apple in March 2021.

UnitedMasters is the 3rd music distribution-related raise in our database this year, in good company with both DistroKid and Royal. Both those companies also saw active headlines in the past week, with Spotify offloading its DistroKid shares and 3LAU launching his first assets on Royal. Currently, there are millions, if not billions, of dollars being piped into the business of providing artists with direct links to fans and letting them retain ownership, across both traditional and future markets (ahem — Web3). Sitting at the midsection between the two and flanked by industry titans, UnitedMasters might be well poised for impact — even if the business of music distribution is becoming increasingly cutthroat and low-margin.

Music startup exits

We’ve added 2 exits to the database this week, including Cameo’s acquisition of Represent and Utopia Music’s acquisition of Lyric Financial.

Represent, a marketing and merch company that helps celebrities and brands set up individualized online storefronts, represents Cameo’s first acquisition. The former already counts celebrities like Jennifer Lopez, Ed Sheeran and Leonardo DiCaprio as partners, and the acquisition will bring these talent relationships into the Cameo fold. This comes off the back of the largely celebrated Spotify–Shopify integration — highlighting the trend of easing creators’ “direct-to-fan” access to additional revenue streams, and suggesting further consolidation at the point where content and merch intersect.

Utopia, which is based in Switzerland and also acquired Quincy-Jones backed “emotional” AI company Musipmap earlier this year, has secured itself a US expansion with the acquisition of Lyric Financial, which is based in Nashville. This is the 2nd fintech- and rights-related startup exit in our database this year, following the recent acquisition of The Music Fund by Hifi in late September.

Artists on cap tables

Technically last week’s news, but Jay-Z’s investment firm Marcy Venture Partners has taken a stake in 24-year-old technologist Iddris Sandu’s incubator spatial Labs.

This is the 8th Jay-Z backed investment in our database this year, and the 5th specifically via Marcy Venture Partners. The sLabs investment preceded the announcement of MVP closing their second fund with $325M in capital commitments earlier this week. Across MVP’s at least 21 investments, including fashion, skin care and food, this is likely the first of the firm’s investments in the metaverse. Perhaps they had an early call from Zuck?

Music Crypto Dashboard

Music NFT drops

This week saw a whirl of assorted reactions across a number of surprising drops. We’ve added 8 of them into our database, including the Interpol x David Lynch collabs, Trippie Redd’s Trippie Headz (pictured above), 3LAU’s Royal “LDAs” and 6ix9ine’s Trollz (which sounds like a rug pull if there ever was one, despite the website’s pointed claim that it is not — see screenshot below).

As we gear up to start on our next collaborative research around music and crypto, one of the most popular themes from our members revolves around fan sentiment. This week’s drops are a timely example of how fan sentiment alone can make or break a drop (and/or wildly inform an artist’s public image).

On the negative side, we have the surprising and widely criticized drop from David Lynch and Interpol, a revisit of their 2011 short-film “I Touch a Red Button Man,” originally played at Coachella. Though the first drop of 7 auctioned for a decent price (with a winning bid of 20.7 ETH, or $82,518), shocked fans took to the internet and mocked the campaign mercilessly.

On the flip side, as an example of positive fan sentiment, 3LAU announced the first assets to be minted on his NFT platform, Royal (focused on sharing music rights to NFT holders). Looking to the original Twitter announcement, we can see excited fans congratulating each other, saying they feel “lucky to get one.” The drop was a success, minting all 333 tokens. However, even 3LAU seems to be pushing a new language – instead of calling them NFTs, they are called Limited Digital Assets (LDAs).

NFT platforms focused on music

Unsurprisingly, this was a busy week for NFT platforms launches. We’ve added 6 new platforms to the database (notice above we added only 8 NFT drops), including NFT-ticketing platforms TicketMint and Centaurify.

NFT ticketing hopes to disrupt the $15B ticketing industry and its modern headaches through tactics like verifying fans, combating forgery and creating perpetual revenue on the blockchain. Though NFT/blockchain ticketing isn’t exactly a new concept, a definitive leader in the market has yet to emerge.

This week, however, sees new contenders in Centaurify, TicketMint by SmartLedger (a blockchain distribution channel) and the newly launched NFT ticketing mobile app YellowHeart Wallet(an offshoot of Yellowheart). A primary differentiator between the platforms is that while TicketMint aims to target both URL and IRL performances, Centaurify focuses more on replacing traditional tangible fan collectibles (tickets, albums, trinkets, etc.) with NFTs. YellowHeart, which replaces tickets with NFTs in the apps’ wallet, may have a leg up on them both due to an earlier launch in the collectibles space and a slightly more established audience (with previous partnerships featuring Kings of Leon and Maroon 5).

Music/Creator DAOs

3 new music DAOs joined our database this week, including two label-DAOs (Dreams Never Die and XYZ) and Melos Studio. Both Dreams Never Die and XYZ are using Mirror’s suite of Web3 tools to run crowdfunds and communicate their mission to interested members.

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