Songtradr finalises $30m funding round for global expansion

Los Angeles-based Australian owned global B2B music rights and licensing marketplace platform Songtradr has completed a US$30 million series C funding round.

This puts the value of the company – set up by high profile songwriters and producers Paul and Victoria Wiltshire – at $165 million, according to one report.

As indicated in the Wiltshires’ recent interview with TMN, this will allow Songtradr to expand to further territories, develop new products and make key acquisitions to follow last year’s buy-out of creative music licensing agency Big Sync Music.

The business had already been growing at over 25% per quarter in recent years and experienced revenue growth in the first half of 2020 of 160% compared to the same period last year.

But Paul Wiltshire, the company’s CEO notes that growth has been triggered by the pandemic.

“Songtradr is a beneficiary of the significant acceleration of digital adoption resulting from the pandemic,” Wiltshire said.

“It is an unprecedented time and our focus has been on delivering value to our community of artists, composers and music licensees.

“This capital round will be utilised to execute our long term strategy of developing a data-informed music rights ecosystem that delivers greater efficiencies to the music licensing and rights management processes, and to expand our product offering further.” 

The company raised $12 million in early 2019 and expanded into Australia last February.

The latest capital raise was led by the St. Baker Australian family office and included a number of other prominent Australian family offices, as well as several existing Songtradr investors.

The platform has over 500,000 artists, songwriters and rights owners, which it connects with brands, agencies, streaming platforms, SVOD networks, film, TV and gaming companies.

It has offices in New York, London, Belfast, Stockholm, Paris, Hamburg and Singapore, and opened its Sydney office under music supervisor and producer Michael Szumowski.

It currently has about 3,500 Australian artists on the platform.

In March, Songtradr introduced a scheme to pay 100% of licensing transaction fees directly to the artists. It is ​offering free distribution services until the end of December.