An app which charges a monthly Spotify-style premium subscription to attend an unlimited number of local live shows is the recipient of a new US $8m seed funding injection.
Subscribers to Jukely Unlimited pay $25 a month for standard membership, or can upgrade to an ‘Unlimited Plus’ tariff for $45pm – which allows them to bring a friend to shows or visit two concerts in one day.
Unlike Spotify, however, Jukely no longer offers any kind of ‘freemium’ entry level; subscribers have to pay to take advantage.
Interestingly the new $8m funding, which comes from existing investors, is led by Spotify investors Northzone and Alex Zubillaga’s 14W.
Before becoming a successful investor in start-ups, Zubillaga worked at Warner Music Group – as did a fellow Jukely investor, Lyor Cohen.
Additional participation in the funding round come from Larry Marcus, Hany Nada, Lyor Cohen, Maiden Lane and GroupMe founders Steve Martocci and Jared Hecht.
Jukely said the investment would be used to grow its team and expand the Jukely Unlimited service into more cities around the world.
Since launching last October, the concert subscription service has launched in 10 cities – including New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Austin, Chicago, Miami, Toronto, Seattle, Philadelphia and Denver – and subscribers can attend free shows in all of them.
New shows go live daily on the Jukely site each morning, posted three days before each event takes place.
“The service has proved to generate additional revenue and is clearly expanding the market for the live music industry by getting music lovers to attend shows they normally wouldn’t go to see,” said Bora Celik, Jukely Founder.
Mainly positioned as an emerging artist discovery service, Jukely’s subscribers are going to 2-3 shows per month on average, and 65% of subscribers claim to be going to see artists they’d never heard of before.
Jukely Unlimited started out as a service to market shows and for people to search and discover new artists in their area and purchase tickets, but evolved into a monthly subscription business.Music Business Worldwide
