US firm Lively is one of a clutch of startups trying to help artists record concerts then sell them to fans. Now it has $2m of new funding to help it grow. GigaOm reported the funding based on an SEC financial filing by the company, although Lively isn’t saying who invested as part of the round. The company’s app is available for iOS, Android and Windows Phone devices, selling shows in audio-only or audio-and-video versions, with Keith Urban, Damien Jurado and The Posies among the artists to have tried it. This space is interesting, but also challenging: the idea of selling concert recordings is attractive in theory, but few of these startups have attracted the big-name artists they’d need to spread awareness of their apps. Take UK-based competitor Soundhalo as one example: it launched last summer amid a blaze of publicity with sets by Alt-J and Atoms for Peace. Yet since then, only one more gig – an August date by Plan B – has been added, and that only has five tracks available. Meanwhile, the company’s Twitter account hasn’t been updated since October, and its blog since August. Lively’s $2m at least gives that company more runway to figure the model out, so we’ll watch closely to see how it progresses.
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