Audoo raises £600k Seed Investment from Angels

London, UK, 30th May 2019 – Today, Audoo, a technology start-up on a mission to revolutionise music royalty distribution, has announced £600k in funding in a bid to improve the monitoring of music played in commercial spaces and ensure artists are paid accurately.

Backers include Greg Gormley (co-Founder of Bink), Luke Heron (co-founder and CEO of Testcard), Tim Davies (Director of Ventures and Chief Innovation Officer of Co-op), Ed Matthews (Investment Banker) and Marcus Watson (CEO of Adoreum).

In a $43 billion global industry, artists are currently only paid 12 per cent of the revenue generated. In addition, artists and record companies lose $2.7 billion in revenue annually because SME owners (such as cafes, gyms and barber shops) typically stream music from personal accounts instead of buying a commercial-use license. On top of this, 75 per cent of UK businesses that should have a commercial-use license don’t currently pay for one.


Performance Royalty Organisations (PROs) currently calculate royalty payments from estimations based on popular radio play and by manually capturing small segments of what’s played. These estimations are then typically administered through manual data-entry processes, often leading to smaller artists losing out.

Working closely with PROs, Audoo plans to eliminate and replace this approach with a smart plug-in device, which hears, identifies and attributes actual played music to ensure royalties are accurately monitored and equitably shared with the right parties. Audoo plans to roll out its device to all PRO license holders.

Founder and CEO, Ryan Edwards (ex-Visa Europe and Vodafone) created Audoo in 2018 after spotting a gap in the market when he heard his own top 10 single playing in Selfridges, only to never be paid for it being broadcast. He ultimately aims to invest a level of profits from Audoo back into the industry.

The Audoo plug-in device captures music being played for a few seconds then shuts down, resulting in a digital fingerprint of audio, which the platform analyses and relays to the PROs, without storing any audio data. It can be managed remotely and the analytics platform has a standard set of APIs/reports specific to each business to allow PROs to leverage customer insight and artist payment distribution.

CEO of Audoo, Ryan Edwards, said: “As an ex-musician, I know first-hand how challenging the distribution of royalties can be with its manual processes and lack of accurate data.

“Tracking performance royalties has always been a challenge in the music industry. We aim to change this by providing a tool for PROs to manoeuvre efficiently in the digital age and ensure artists are paid fairly.”

Investor Greg Gormley stated: “I’m delighted to have invested in such an innovative business that will change the face of the music industry and fairly reward artists. As a technology entrepreneur, it was evident very early on that Audoo’s technology has the potential to revolutionise a much-loved industry, making it fairer and more transparent for everyone.”

ENDS

For more information contact The PHA Group at [email protected] / 0207 4400 781

About Audoo

Audoo is a technology company focusing on ensuring the accurate monitoring of played music, and the fair distribution of music royalties, through state-of-the-art technology supplied to royalty societies and record labels which is rolled out to UK businesses. 

Through a data-driven approach to music streaming analytics, Audoo can provide Performance Royalty Organisations (PROs) with expert insight and analysis to ensure musicians are being paid fairly and accurately, and not by estimation, in the modern age of technology.

Founded by Ryan Edwards in 2018, Audoo is backed by high profile investors including Greg Gormley (Founder of Bink), Luke Heron (co-founder and CEO of Tastecard), Tim Davies (Director of Ventures and Chief Innovation Officer of Co-op), Ed Matthews (Investment Banker), and Marcus Watson (CEO of Adoreum).

The business has its HQ in London.

Manoj Ranaweera

Manoj has founded, failed and successfully exited from a number of technology product companies as well as support organisations since 2004. Among them, Northern Tech Awards and edocr.com were acquired by GP Bullhound and Accusoft, Inc respectively. Today, Manoj is building a trusted support network for technology companies. He is working with founding teams to help them accelerate including raising investment and M&A.

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