StarMaker first came to our attention in 2012 with its karaoke apps for American Idol and The Voice, with the latter a subscription-based app charging users $1.99 a week for access to its catalogue of 150 tracks (Bulletin, 16-Oct-12). By October 2014, StarMaker’s apps had been downloaded 20m times, with the company adding a YouTube MCN string to its business bow,
complete with licensing deals with an array of music publishers (Bulletin, 15-Oct-14). Now it has raised $6.5m of Series B funding to fuel those ambitions, with VC firm Raine Ventures leading the investment. Now with 30m downloads, the company is pitching itself as a discovery network for new talent – or “the transformative power of the platform to discover and develop new artists and the subsequent ability to plug them into opportunities across multiple distribution platforms” as Raine Ventures’ managing partner put it.
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,…