Start-up music technology platform wins £250k equity funding
BEATROOT Music, a big-data music technology platform, has received £250,000 venture capital investment from the North West Fund for Digital and Creative.
The Macclesfield-based company launched the platform at the end of August, after closed BETA trials going ahead with Domino Records, Sentric Music, Universal Music Group and Woodwork Music.
It will use the funding to expand its team, scale the infrastructure and rollout the service across the music industry.
According to the company’s founders, Miles Galliford and Chris Garratt, most record labels and music publishers make 90% of their revenue from just 10% of their songs. Beatroot uses metadata and algorithms to help these companies monetize the under-utilised 90% of their music catalogue.
The Beatroot platform processes large catalogues of tracks, extracts data from the music and adds information from third party sources. Every track and artist is enriched with a set of data points, which can be used to improve search, discovery and the relevancy of recommendations.
The platform will give record labels and music publishers greater visibility of their IP, enabling them to generate multiple revenue streams from their catalogue including brand partnerships, improved synchronization for films, games and advertising, launch niche apps, generate playlists for streaming services, and rapidly test new ideas.
Garrett said: “We are delighted to receive the investment from The North West Fund. Like us, they believe that after 10 years of tough times, the music industry is now entering an exciting period of growth. Doug Morris, CEO of Sony Music, was recently quoted as predicting that the music sector will make a full recovery back to the $30bn industry it was in 2005. We’re looking forward to working with our clients and partners to be part of this rapid growth.”
Rupert Wingate-Saul, investment manager, AXM Venture Capital, which manages The North West Fund for Digital & Creative, said: “The Beatroot team have a strong track record of creating innovative solutions that solve industry-specific problems. When looking for investments we like to find solutions which will become part of their clients’ daily workflow. We believe the Beatroot platform will achieve this goal.”
