Paris-based music data platform Soundcharts has raised $3.1m (€2.65m) in a Series A funding round led by Alven Capital.
Soundcharts, which fully launched in Q3 2016 after a year in beta, now boasts 250 enterprise clients from 23 countries, including the likes of Believe Digital, 300 Entertainment, SONGS Publishing, Red Bull Records and Ignition Management.
The company monitors social and streaming activity, charts, playlists and radio airplay data in real-time – and is currently used by executives working across marketing, sales, live, A&R and management, in addition to artists.
The firm says it will use the new funding to strengthen its technical leadership, while it is currently recruiting to open offices in Los Angeles, New York and London before the end of the year.
In June 2017, Soundcharts won the 10th anniversary edition of Midemlab – the international pitching competition for music-related startups held at Midem. Midemlab had previously recognized the likes of SoundCloud, The EchoNest (sold to Spotify in 2014) and Next Big Sound (sold to Pandora in 2015).
In addition to Alven Capital, Soundcharts’ new Series A round saw participation from Kima Ventures and Global Founders Capital.
“Soundcharts processes, analyzes and archives a mass of information in real-time and gives meaning to this data thanks to an intuitive personalized dashboard and automated reports” said David Weiszfeld, CEO and founder of Soundcharts.
“What is magical about Soundcharts is that we help artists, managers, product managers, digital marketers, sales team, radio programmers, playlists curators, brands as well as with the A&R discovery process.”
David Weiszfeld, Soundcharts
“What is magical about Soundcharts is that we help artists, managers, product managers, digital marketers, sales team, radio programmers, playlists curators, brands as well as with the A&R discovery process. We provide a service to anyone serious about doing business with artists or more generally music content.
“This puts Soundcharts at a central position within the ecosystem. We are thrilled to see that many industry leading companies chose us to power their daily workflow and we hope to keep building the platform for tomorrow’s usages and help our users execute their strategies more efficiently.”
Jeremy Uzan, Partner at Alven Capital comments: “The global music business has been dramatically changed by digitalization and the development of revolutionary new ways of producing and consuming music.
“As a new generation of professionals is entering this growing and changing industry, there will be space to develop a must-have SaaS platform offering real-time market intelligence. We have been really impressed by David’s vision and ambition, and by his ability to structure a highly talented tech team around him.
“Soundcharts is already experiencing a strong traction on the market, and we are convinced that soon every music professional will have to switch to this cutting-edge product to stay in the game.”
David Weiszfeld started his career at Universal Music France as an intern in 2006 and a few years later became Head of International Development/Sales where he was responsible for the international careers of Stromae, Feist, Kavinsky, Carla Bruni, C2C, and the rest of the roster of Universal Music France.
He left the major in 2013 to create artist management and consulting company bSHARP, which now works with artists such as Petit Biscuit, who has racked up more than 300 Million streams at only 17 years of age.
Paris-based Alven Capital is an early-stage venture capital firm with over $500 million under management.
Its past or current investments include Algolia, Dataiku, Drivy, happn, Wit.ai (Facebook), CaptainTrain (Trainline/KKR), Bime Analytics (Zendesk), Frichti, Tinyclues, iAdvize, Peopledoc, Stripe, Akeneo and OpenClassrooms. alven.coMusic Business Worldwide
