Concert crowdsourcing site MyMusicTaste raises $11m
MyMusicTaste, a South Korean crowdsourcing platform for music and live events, has raised a further US$11m in ‘series-C’ investment, bringing its total funding to more than $22m.
The Seoul-based company, founded in 2012, aims to take the guesswork out of concert promotion by allowing fans to request artists visit their cities, giving promoters and artists an indication of demand in any given territory. The service now has more than 1.3m users worldwide, and works with 56 promoters and 30 booking agencies.
The company’s founder and CEO, Ethan JaeSeok Lee, tells TechCrunch the money will be put towards more than doubling the concerts it helps to plan in 2018, with the company aiming for 100 – up from 41 so far this year – and expanding into more genres. (It is currently a leader in bringing K-pop shows to the West – a fast-growing market for Korean music.)
Compared to the traditional model of concert planning, MyMusicTaste (MMT) places the onus on music fans to ‘make’ the shows in their cities, with other stakeholders coming on board when there is sufficient perceived demand. The company says it uses the number of requests to “forecast demand by artist and location, and supplies this information to promoters so that they can organise a successful event”.
The $11m will be put towards more than doubling the concerts MyMusicTaste helps plan in 2018
MMT users have so far successful crowdsourced more than 140 events in 32 cities, with non-Korean partner artists including The xx, Dream Theatre and Machine Gun Kelly.
The latest round of investment was led by KTB Network, with participation from other new investors Stonebridge and Yellow Dog. Previous backers Softbank Ventures Korea, Samsung Venture Investment Corporation, Formation 8, Bokwang Investment and Golden Gate Ventures also returned for the series C.
The new investment will also help fund new regional offices in Los Angeles, Europe and south-east Asia and bolster MMT’s data science and engineering team.
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