Photo Credit: Sara Larsson and Stephen Gyasi
Less than one year after securing $1.33 million from investors, “self-serve music licensing platform” Freshsound has announced a €2 million ($2.18 million at the present exchange rate) raise and set its sights on spearheading a global expansion.
Word of this newest round from Stockholm-headquartered Freshsound, which says that it provides “professional storytellers with commercially released music” in exchange for “fully transparent” licensing fees, emerged in several Scandinavian tech publications today.
Contrasting competing platforms like Epidemic Sound (which is also based in Stockholm), Freshsound according to its website charges “no subscription fees,” while the aforesaid licensing costs automatically adjust based upon the type of project and usage at hand. And upon pulling down $1.33 million in investor capital last summer, the sync startup tapped former Sony Music and Warner Music higher-up Helen McLaughlin to serve as head of catalog.
Stockholm’s Zenith Venture Capital and Aligned Ventures are said to have led Freshsound’s newest round, however, with participation from former Avito exec Erik Segerborg, Hipgnosis vet Shiv Prakash, Freshsound board member Kristina Tunkrans, Royal Streaming head Gustav Nordlindh, and film director William Olsson.
In a statement, Freshsound co-founder and CEO Stevie Gyasi indicated that the newly obtained capital will help his company “to build its pool of professional storytellers in advertising and production.” Additionally, the Värmeverket co-founder and AP Academy board member touched on the startup’s broader goal of transforming “the rights process for commercial music.”
“This investment round will help Freshsound to build its pool of professional storytellers in advertising and production, increasing the potential for music creators to make money and for the content creators to make even more impactful content,” communicated Gyasi. “We’re excited to continue on our journey into the next phase and bring more users to our cause.”
In other industry funding news, the past month or so has also brought multimillion-dollar raises for event management platform POSH ($5 million), indie distributor Magroove ($1.6 million), AI-powered musician-collaboration startup Myxt ($2 million), smart TV music video app ROXi ($8.7 million), and, earlier this week, AI music separator AudioShake ($2.7 million). Among the latter’s backers are Metallica’s Black Squirrel, AJR, Crush Music, and Peermusic.
Meanwhile, the stretch likewise delivered an almost $11 million round for AI sheet-music digitization service Enote (which counts as an investor the EU’s European Innovation Council) as well as the announcement of a $32 million raise from indie-focused IP-acquisition business Duetti (which Roc Nation, Presight Capital, and others have backed).