Live music/tech firm Songkick has raised a new $15m funding round from Access Industries, the owner of Warner Music Group and a significant investor in streaming service Deezer.
This is not a new investment relationship. Access Industries previously injected $10m into Songkick in December 2015. The latter company has now raised more than $60m since 2007, when it was founded.
The latest round is accompanied by an expansion of Songkick’s Los Angeles office, and several new executives joining the company: VP of design Lee Martin; VP of product Lydia Goldberg; and biz dev exec Nick Fishbaugh, formerly of Shazam.
Since the merger between the original Songkick and D2C ticketing firm CrowdSurge in June 2015 – itself accompanied by a $16m round of funding – the new business’ emphasis has been focusing more on what it calls “independent artist ticketing”.
Its deal to sell tickets for Adele’s world tour has been the company’s biggest coup, but other clients include Metallica, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Mumford and Sons.
Songkick says that it now sells tickets in more than 60 countries, while reaching more than 12 million fans every month. The latter figure is up from 10 million monthly users of its website and app in May 2014.
“The biggest myth in live music is that ticket scalping is somehow impossible to prevent, but with the right focus and the right tools, these issues can be solved, and Songkick is at the leading edge of solving them,” said CEO Matt Jones in a statement today.
It hasn’t all been plain-sailing for the post-merger Songkick. There was a privacy scare on the first day it sold tickets for Adele, while a lawsuit accusing Live Nation and Ticketmaster of antitrust violations and anti-competitive behaviour received a setback in the courts earlier this year.
The new funding round means Songkick has raised $41m since June 2015: quite the war-chest to develop its anti-scalping technology and build out its ticketing distribution across the world, even if the economics of that business remain a mystery.
Songkick has historically classed as a “small company” in the UK exempt from publishing its accounts, although if its growth meant that changed in 2015, we will soon find out: the deadline for its 2015 financials is the end of September according to Companies House.
$60m of funding, and previous investors including Index Ventures and Sequoia Capital, inevitably spurs thoughts of what Songkick’s ultimate exit might be.
The company has long been seen as a potential acquisition target for streaming services – Spotify in particular, given its longstanding partnership with Songkick – as well as major labels and live-industry giants.
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