We wrote about Snapverse earlier in the year when it was one of a crop of mobile apps trying to be a ‘Snapchat for music’, enabling people to bundle music, video and photos into 20-second ‘snaps’ to send to friends (Bulletin, 22-Jul-13). Now, three months later, the company has struck licensing deals that will give it more music to play with. Snapverse now has agreements with Universal Music, Sony Music and Warner Brothers, according to TechCrunch. The new deals came as Snapverse announced a $3.5m funding round. Yes, it’s fair to assume a big chunk of that has already been spent on licensing: “They didn’t give us this access for free and we didn’t ask for it for free. We wrote out pretty big cheques,” says CEO Scot McCraken. And how does Snapverse plan to make money out of all this? “The only honest answer is connecting with our users and finding out what’s important to them and where they see areas where they would be willing to part with their previous money.” Hmm.
Tools: platforms to help you reach new audiences
Tools: Kaiber
In the year or so since its launch, AI startup Kaiber has been making waves,…