14 music-tech startups changing the industry, including companies building new data analysis, AI, and collaboration tools

Audius is a music-streaming platform built on the blockchain

Audius cofounders Roneil Rumburg (L) and Forrest Browning (R). Charlie Gross

Amount raised: $15 million, according to the company.

What it does: Audius is a music-streaming platform with a Web3 angle: it's a decentralized music app. "Think of us as sort of a more modern form of SoundCloud with a lot of paid superfan engagement layered on top," Forrest Browning, cofounder and chief product officer, told BI.

The platform operates on a decentralized blockchain powered by Solana and Ethereum, Browning said.

Audius also launched a music marketplace last year, which lets artists publish and sell premium tracks in "sample packs" that fans can download and remix, Browning said. Musicians take away 90% of the earnings generated by the platform, while 10% goes to node operators, BI previously reported.

Audius now has between 5 million and 6 million monthly active users, Browning said. The platform's most popular genres are electronic and hip-hop.

Why it matters for the music world: "Artists just don't have a venue or an outlet right now to drive deeper relationships and deeper collaborations," Browning said. Audius wants to fill that gap, offering a new way for superfans to engage with their favorite artists.

Highnote helps musicians collaborate by streamlining file sharing and communication

Highnote cofounders Jordan Bradley, Paulina Vo, and Chris Muccioli. Courtesy of Highnote.

Amount raised: $4 million, according to the company.

What it does: Highnote is a platform that streamlines collaboration for musicians and audio creators. Users can upload and store files, communicate with collaborators, leave comments, and compare different audio versions — bringing multiple tools (like Google Drive, Slack, and Dropbox) together in one place.

The software is built on Google Cloud and offers a free version and tiers that go up to $30 a month with more storage and other add-ons. Highnote isn't just for musicians either; The New York Times uses the platform to produce music for podcasts like "The Daily," Highnote said.

Why it matters for the music world: Technology is making it easier for a larger group of creatives to build music from scratch, and Highnote's collaboration tools help them work together.

"The software ecosystem around the production of music starts to dramatically increase in value because now it's suddenly super accessible and easy for people to create music and sell it," Highnote's Bradley said.

Mogul calls itself the Rocket Money for the music industry

Mogul cofounders Joey Mason (L) and Jeff Ponchick (R). Courtesy of Mogul

Amount raised: $1.9 million, according to the company.

What it does: A fintech tool for musicians, Mogul compares itself to the personal finance and budgeting app Rocket Money. "Our mission is to help musicians and their teams understand their business so that they can make more money," said co-CEO Jeff Ponchick. The startup was cofounded by Ponchick and Joey Mason, both ex-SoundCloud executives.

Artists, labels, and other rights holders use Mogul to pull earnings data, such as statements, catalogs, and registrations, in order to understand where royalties are coming from.

"Once we have all that data, we can start to say, 'Okay, well you put this music in Spotify through this service for the sound recording side,'" said Ponchick. "'On the publishing side, we're seeing you're not receiving mechanical publishing royalties in these 10 territories, so you should probably reach out to your publisher about that.'"

Why it matters for the music world: With so many working parts and stakeholders across the music industry, Mogul wants to make earning money a little bit easier for artists.

"There's just so many different ways to make money [and] no one trusts any of these entities," said Ponchick. "We're trying to build a place where people can go to get the peace of mind to know if they're good or not. And if they're not, they can take action on what to improve so they can be getting paid what they're owed."

Offtop is building a Dropbox for music collaborators

Sam Hamad, CEO of Offtop. Dañiel Aügust.

Amount raised: Undisclosed.

What it does: Offtop is a collaboration and file-sharing tool built specifically for the music industry. The company's platform helps artists, producers, and other collaborators piece together beats, demos, samples, and other unreleased files as they work on a new song.

Why it matters for the music world: Song production is more collaborative than ever, with dozens of writers sometimes appearing in the credits on a single track. Offtop's platform is designed to make the song-writing process go smoothly, particularly when creators are working in different parts of the world.

The company has thousands of users on its platform, CEO Hamad said. It supports file sharing, tagging, and organizing in a manner that is specific to the needs of music producers, such as attaching audio stems and enabling users to record and write over a beat on the platform.

"Producers use us to replace Dropbox, replace Gmail, replace iMessage," Hamad told BI. "We're becoming the primary tool for how they send their content to another creator and how they organize all of the content that gets sent to them."

RealCount is a data-analytics startup that helps artists understand ticket sales

RealCount cofounders Diana Gremore and JC Liang. Courtesy of RealCount

Amount raised: $430,000, per the company.

What it does: RealCount is a data-analytics startup that aggregates information driving ticket sales. Artists, agents, and other teams behind musicians and live performers can use RealCount to better understand how many tickets are sold, who is buying them, and where the sales are occurring.

"We just launched a new tool, or a new analysis, where for every event and every artist (as well as every venue), we have a buyer-tendencies figure," said CEO Diana Gremore. "For artists, generally speaking, we can share and let you know if they tend to be a walkup sort of artist, where the bulk of their sales throughout the sales cycle for an event is going to happen based on historical sales."

Why it matters for the music world: "Transparency in ticketing is a huge movement," Gremore said. Getting that data from third-party platforms can be a challenge, and RealCount is focused on serving artists and their teams with tools to make that process easier.

RoEx is using AI to lower the cost of mixing and mastering

David Ronan, CEO of RoEx. Courtesy of RoEx.

Amount raised: Around $1.1 million dollars including grant funds, according to the company.

What it does: RoEx built an AI platform called Automix that helps artists and producers automate the process of mixing and mastering tracks.

Why it matters for the music world: RoEx is among a growing number of upstarts that are making it easier to clean up and master audio so it's ready for listeners across streaming apps like Spotify and Apple Music.

The company recently launched a research initiative backed by the UK government where it's training AI to mirror the particular production styles of mix engineers, compensating them for access to their "sonic signature," RoEx CEO David Ronan told BI. Users of the platform can also upload a reference song to help give Automix context for how to master a new audio track.

"You give us some very basic settings that you need to get going, and then we give you back a mixed and master track in a couple of minutes at very low cost compared to the traditional route," Ronan said.

The company said its AI offers the technical groundwork to make a song sound good, but it doesn't want to displace the artistry and creativity that a professional producer brings to the table.

"Our existing mixing system isn't like a black-box model that's been trained on loads of fantastic mixes," Ronan said. "No. 1, it is very difficult to get that data anyway, but we don't believe in it. We believe that art should be compensated."

Suno allows anyone to make a song with a text prompt

Suno's Keenan Freyberg, Georg Kucsko, Martin Camacho, and Mikey Shulman. Courtesy of Suno.

Amount raised: $125 million, according to the company.

What it does: Suno built a generative-AI platform where users can enter text prompts to create songs.

Why it matters for the music world: Generative AI is a controversial topic in the music business (to put it lightly). But there's no denying that the general public wants access to GenAI tools for music in the same way that they turn to platforms like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Midjourney to generate useful text and visual outputs. Suno, an upstart that launched in 2023 and has attracting 10 million users, per the company, is poised to become a leader in the generative-AI music space in the coming months. It scored a partnership with Microsoft in late 2023, becoming a plugin on the company's AI tool CoPilot.

Suno said its primary user base is people who are making music for the first time and that it views text-based AI prompts as just the beginning.

"We're always thinking about ways to make it easier for people to express themselves through music," Suno cofounder Keenan Freyberg told BI. "Personally, I have a lot of trouble expressing myself through text only, or finding the vocabulary to convey what I'm trying to get across. So more to be explored there."

A likely challenge ahead for Suno is demonstrating to rights holders that its AI model was ethically trained. Major labels, independent artists, and other music-rights holders are concerned about voice and audio cloning. Many wonder whether their work has been used to train AI models without proper compensation or if a rapid influx of AI-generated songs on apps like Spotify could dilute future streaming revenue.

When BI asked Suno if its platform trained on copyrighted material, Freyberg said its training data includes a wide variety of audio that's publicly available online, including music but also speech.

"We work closely with our lawyers and advisors to ensure we're following the law and industry best practices, but the exact recipe is proprietary as it is for most companies," he said.

The company doesn't allow users to name particular artists in text prompts when generating songs.

"We've really distanced ourselves from all of the voice-cloning stuff that's cribbing off name, image, and likeness of other artists and try to focus the experience on giving people tools to express themselves," Freyberg said.

Surf Music is helping songwriters land deals with buyers

Kenneth Kobori, CEO of Surf Music. Courtesy of Surf Music.

Amount raised: $3.5 million, according to the company.

What it does: Surf Music is a match-making tool that connects songwriters and producers with buyers in the music and entertainment business. The goal is to find ways to help creators sell their unreleased works to collaborators in music, TV, film, or other areas of entertainment.

Why it matters for the music world: In a world where some companies are building AI tools that generate songs via text prompts, Surf Music is focusing on connecting human creators and buyers.

The company said it works with major labels like Sony Music Labels Japan and Universal Virgin Japan, and offers a tiered subscription model for individual users to join. It recently helped match showrunner David Shin with songwriters Shayon Daniels and India Carney and 2Soul Music and Sunny Boy for two music placements on the Disney+ and Hulu show "House of the Owl."

"One thing that we really are firm about is empowering the creator and making sure that the creator receives as much as they can get from a song, which means that we don't take any transaction fees or we don't take any royalties or whatnot, even if a song is placed," CEO Ken Kobori told BI.

"We really want to cut out that middleman and be able to deliver songs directly from the creator to the buyer," Kobori said.

SymphonyOS is making it easier for artists to automate marketing

SymphonyOS cofounders Megh Vakharia and Chuka Chase. Chris DelVecchio.

Amount raised: $1 million, according to the company.

What it does: SymphonyOS is a marketing-automation tool built specifically for artists and their teams. Its users can use the platform to boost pre-saves on new songs, collect fan email addresses, pitch Spotify playlists, and buy ads to boost YouTube views.

Why it matters for the music world: Music marketing in the age of TikTok often leans on influencer and short-video campaigns, but tapping into other digital-marketing channels like Spotify and setting up a hub for pre-saves and fan engagement is also critical. SymphonyOS built a centralized platform to make it easier for artists and other creatives to run automated marketing campaigns from a single place. The company's CEO Megh Vakharia said the platform has around 40,000 users. It's partnered with music distributors like United Masters and CD Baby and enabled campaigns for artists like Chance the Rapper and SZA.

"The intention really is to take marketing and make it super easy for anyone on the internet to do, almost like what Canva did for graphic design," Vakharia told BI.

Veeps is building custom livestreams for music concerts

Veeps team (L to R): Benji Madden, Kyle Heller, and Joel Madden. Jordan Kelsey Knight.

Amount raised: Undisclosed.

What it does: Veeps is a livestreaming platform for music concerts. The company offers monthly or annual subscriptions that give users access to a slate of live-music and comedy shows, offering live and on-demand video featuring artists like Coldplay, Childish Gambino, J Balvin, and Katy Perry.

Why it matters for the music world: Artists and fans embraced digital streaming amid stay-at-home orders in 2020 and 2021. While live performing is back in full swing, the ability to broadcast music to fans around the world who don't live near concert venues has stuck around.

"Not everybody can afford a concert ticket," Veeps cofounder and chief product officer Kyle Heller told BI. "Not everybody can go to every show. Not every artist can tour everywhere."

Veeps installs camera and audio equipment in popular venues like House of Blues, using a "control room in the cloud" to live edit and toggle between views during a stream, Heller said.

The company is well positioned to capitalize on the concert-streaming opportunity due to its relationship with Live Nation Entertainment, which acquired a majority stake in the business in 2021. The partnership not only gives the company access to certain artists for streams, but also makes it easier to coordinate on setting up cameras and recording equipment at venues.

"One of the key benefits from the Live Nation partnership is that we're able to leverage that network of venues so we can actually lower the cost of production," Heller said.