Vinyl Group Acquires Web3 Pioneer Serenade
Vinyl Group continues to expand, this time through a deal to acquire the assets of Max Shand’s Serenade.
Announced Monday to the ASX, Vinyl Group has entered into and completed an agreement to acquire the assets of the digital collectible specialist, in an arrangement that includes an upfront scrip payment of $800,000; and further scrip earn-out of $1.5 million based on profit and loss targets.
As part of the pact, key Serenade employees have joined Vinyl Group including founder and CEO Shand.
As a full-time employee, Shand will lead Serenade to “achieve its performance goals while also helping to rapidly accelerate the Vinyl.com business,” reads a statement, while “expanding its product offerings into physical and digital collectables whilst launching into additional markets.”
Launched during the pandemic, Serenade’s digital marketplace has served 200-plus global artists including Liam and Noel Gallagher, Muse, Sum 41, Twenty One Pilots, and Thirty Seconds to Mars, and also served as the official NFT provider for the BRIT Awards.
Max Shand
Serenade has commercial partnerships with more than 100 record labels including Warner Music Group, Beggars Group, Concord, Glassnote, FUGA, and PIAS.
According to a statement, sales of its NFC-enabled Smart Formats have grown 56% MoM since launching in January 2024, with a total of 12,000 units sold in H1 2024.
“Max Shand has built Serenade into a business with significant potential, and through our acquisition of the platform, we’ll put the resources into Serenade to allow it to reach that potential,” comments Vinyl Group CEO Josh Simons.
“Vinyl Group is, at its core, a tech business and this was a great opportunity to expand our tech offering. We look forward to welcoming Max and other key members of the Serenade team to Vinyl Group.”
The arrangement was completed on the weekend.
Masterminded by whizz-kid Shand, the earliest incarnation of Serenade was, as its name suggests, a platform where music fans could go direct to artists and purchase a personalised, virtual — and shareable — performance.
Later, the business rolled out in the U.K. in 2021 and regeared as a specialist in eco-friendly NFTs, with a raft of products from new and unreleased performances, to music, documentary footage, rare visuals and more.
Today, it’s touted as the first tradable marketplace for digital music, its business model bringing record collecting into the digital era.
“I’m thrilled to announce the acquisition of Serenade by Vinyl Group, Australia’s only ASX-listed music company,” says Shand.
“From our very first conversation, it was clear that Josh, Jorge, and the Board shared our vision for supporting artists and audiences through outstanding music products, and so I’m excited to see how this partnership accelerates our impact. I also want to acknowledge the incredible Serenade team, whose passion, integrity, talent, and dedication made this all possible.”
It’s the second acquisition by Vinyl Group in a week, following an arrangement to buy Funkified Entertainment.
Vinyl Group (ASX: VNL) is Australia’s only ASX-listed music company, with a growing empire that includes its music credits business Jaxsta; Vampr, the leading music industry social-professional network and talent marketplace; Vinyl.com, the online record store; and The Brag Media.
Based in Sydney, Vinyl Group made global headlines with its purchase of The Brag Media, announced in December 2023 and completed in late January 2024, a pact that welcomed The Brag’s suite of titles into the Vinyl fold, including Rolling Stone AU/NZ, Variety AU/NZ, Tone Deaf, and The Music Network.