The dance music occupying modern day airwaves has an overwhelming amount of sample-heavy songs, hours-long mixes, remixes, recorded live sets, mixtapes, and more. Artists take pieces of different music and put them together in a carefully curated original that they can call their own. However, many of these “unofficial” tracks made by up-and-coming artists and household names alike can’t get them on major streaming platforms due to record labels refusing the content to be distributed unless the people involved are getting paid the proper royalty fees. This “illegal” music has found a home on SoundCloud’s open and user based platform. It seems that things are going to start changing soon.
Music technology company Dubset received $4 million dollars of Series A funding led by early growth equity firm Cue Ball Capital, who focuses on recurring revenue platforms in business information services, digital media and specialty consumer opportunities. More investors involved in the funding were MediaNet, Joi Ito’s Neoteny 3, Resolute Venture Partners and Redwood Venture Partners.
What this round of funding means is that Dubset can now further their their MixBANK technology, which basically scans a song, identifies the original recordings being used, and pay the copyright holders and publishers, while also expanding their business ventures to credit the artists “legally.” In 2016, Dubset also struck deals with the some of the industry’s top distributors, Apple Music and Sony/ATV Music Publishing, meaning that this funding will also expand those deals to include more record labels and artists.
Dubset CEO Stephen White had a few things to say about the major investment that will move the company’s innovations forward:
“This year will be huge in opening up this ecosystem. We have some very big labels and publishers about to join.“[The $4 million dollar funding] allows us to scale operations to onboard the thousands of labels and publishers already signed up and get the rest on board.”
He continues to say that, “Cue Ball’s leadership in this investment round and strong participation from the music and venture capital community validates our approach and strong belief that artists deserve to be fairly compensated for the use of their content. DJs are the ultimate curators and hundreds of millions of music fans all over the world are hungry for their mixes and remixes. We look forward to being able to make this amazing content available at scale. Our investors are a diverse group that shares our belief that the music fans who love mix and remix content are a massively underserved audience who will benefit immensely from our work at Dubset.”
This is great news for artists who have not been getting paid for their hard work and dedication to the craft of curating music. The funding going towards Dubset is one of innovation and passion that can only be assumed to do good. Stay tuned for what happens next!
