Soundtrack Your Brand, the brainchild of an ex-Spotify executive and the quickest growing background music company, has raised $22 million in a round of funding.
The round was led by UK's Balderton Capital and Industrifonden, which is a Nordic venture capital fund. The funding, Sound Your Brand revealed will be used for the business' worldwide expansion, as well as improving the service. The company intends to use the money to help sell music streaming to businesses.
Sound Your Brand was founded in 2013 by Andreas Liffgarden and Ola Sars who are ex-global head of business at Spotify and cofounder of Beats Music, respectively. It develops music playlists that cater to the needs of its clients, which include the likes of Tag Heur and McDonald's.
It also operates Spotify Business in Finland, Norway, and Sweden and has asserted that its customer base, as well as overall business, have experienced a growth of more than 400 percent.
The latest round of funding also saw participation from HMP, Northzone, Creandum, and Telia. Interestingly, Spotify, which owns 15 percent of it's share capital, did not participate. Spotify is also the biggest external owner of Sound Your Brand. The number of shares issued by Sound Your Brand, as well as the valuation of the company is not known.
The Way Forward
Entrepreneur Johan Englund, who is also the investment manager of Industrifonden, will join it's board of directors. Giving him company will be Lars Fjeldsoe-Nielsen, who is the general partner at Balderton Capital. Fjeldsoe-Nielsen has been with both Dropbox and Uber as head of mobile.
Englund is optimistic that Sound Your Brand will revolutionize the way in which people perceive background music.
Sound Your Brand has the edge over its rivals like Mood Media as its distribution costs are much lower. The reason for having a lower distribution cost is that the product is digital, which aids it in targeting more customers.
The company currently distributes its background music through USB sticks, CDs, and satellite feeds. Sound Your Brand focuses on both small businesses and the large chains. The company focuses on the strategy that music will keep customers stay put at a store longer, which will aid in boosting sales. It has received funding of $40 million to date.
Liffgarden, Sound Your Brand's cofounder and Chairman, believes that background music is simply being "sold as a utility." He feels that there is no thought being put into what a music brand is playing and why it is playing the same. Therefore, Sound Your Brand aims to revamp the industry completely,
"Today's background music sucks for brands and consumers alike, and it's hurting the music industry at large. As lovers of music and technology, we're completely overhauling this industry, to once and for all kill bad background music," noted Liffgarden.
With the $22 million funding in its kitty, Sound Your Brand is well on course to achieve this target, as well as plans of global expansion.
Photo: Sorosh Tavakoll | Flickr
