Aussie tech startup Audalize expanding to NZ, UK

Another Australian tech startup is planting its footprint outside its home territory.

Perth-based B2B background music supplier Audalize is eyeing New Zealand and the United Kingdon, after enjoying 300% growth in Australia this year, according to founder Ross Woodhams.

“We’ve been working for years now within Australia to equip businesses with an easy, integrated and affordable way to manage their background music, digital signage, audio messaging and ambient visuals like action sport, social and lifestyle,” Woodhams told TMN.

Audalize works with hospitality, retail, apparel, property & financial and fitness businesses.

It also targets corporates seeking an option to the consumer streaming service they use but which they find are not suitable for business purposes due to deficiencies in crossfades, normalisation and tempo matching.

Audalize players have advanced features like a smart queue point detection to sense silence, fade out and hard stop in music.

“Audalize is a channel business,” Woodhams said. “We don’t sell directly to the customer. We sell via the AV Integrator (AVI), the customers trusted advisor.

“It’s a strategy that’s worked very well here. The UK and NZ have a very mature AVI industry.”

Contracts are signed in NZ and a distribution arm will open in the UK early next year.

Because of COVID, UK business owners are assessing how to drive customer experience at a reasonable cost, with an entry point for Audalize.

“A singular, cohesive product like Audalize doesn’t yet exist in the UK,” he said.

“Our platform gives enterprise customers the ability to build custom solutions and deploy those solutions to thousands of sites in minutes”.

He added: “We’re really encouraged by some of the discussions with partners there and expect the uptake across retail, fitness and hospitality to drive our growth right through 2022.”

The global strategy is to complement existing hardware with new mobile technology in 2022, with increased access to more than 100 million songs.

One is app-less and log-on-less jukebox Jukeo.

“Mobile apps were fine over a decade ago when you had limited mobile bandwidth – but today, especially with 5G, hell, even 4G, apps are just a burden for users and operators.

“The other point is whole jukebox experience has been de-monetised by background music providers and that sucks for artists who, for a large part of the 20th century, made a lot of money from jukeboxes so we’ve worked really hard on how to monetise the jukebox again without impacting user experience.”

Also coming is an enterprise device and content management system, and a developer program allowing developers to build applications that integrate with the Audalize services, from controlling players through to building custom consoles for staff in their venues.