Techstars Music has named international nine music tech startups to its class of 2019. The startups for this third edition of the mentoring and accelerator program were chosen from about 1000 applicants.
photo: Kiano Nicio
Based in Los Angeles, the Techstars Music Accelerator 2019 program runs February 4 - May 2, ending with a demo day, where the companies from the 2019 class will present to an audience of more than 300 venture investors, music executives and global entertainment technology leaders.
Startups from the 2017 and 2018 classes raised more than $40 million in follow-on investments, with the combined valuation of the Techstars Music Accelerator portfolio now surpassing $300 million - all evidence of renewed venture capital interest in music and music tech.
The Music Fund – San Francisco, CA
The Music Fund provides an automated platform that uses a data-driven smart-pricing algorithm to offer up-front cash for a portion of any artist’s royalty stream income. The purchased assets are added to an institutional-class fund that gives investors broad exposure to the music industry through quarterly dividends that aren’t correlated with the stock market.
- Founders: John Funge and Thomas Jerde
- Noteworthy: Independent artists make up an ever-growing share of global consumption. Offering those artists the ability to sell partial shares of their future income is an attractive asset class for investors.
SuperRes – Brisbane, Australia
Using AI to separate, classify and up-res audio for the purpose of audio search, discovery, recommendation, personalization, and quality enhancement. Works with studio as well as UGC audio and potentially even live mobile communication (video conferencing or phone calls).
- Founders: Meaghan White, Lindsay Watt, and Christopher Gage.
- Noteworthy: In addition to helping create new audio and music, artificial intelligence will also revolutionize the way audio is processed, compressed and delivered and reconstructed.
inklocker – Los Angeles, CA
Inklocker is like AWS for custom-manufacturing — providing a decentralized global network of on-demand manufacturers. Sell the shirt online to customers world-wide, carry no inventory, have products produced and shipped locally to the buyer.
- Founders: Brandon Sowers and Tim Fillmore
- Noteworthy: The combination of rapid improvements in direct-to-garment printing as well as the gig economy offer incredible opportunities for creators and producers of direct-to-consumer products.
Replica – Brisbane, Australia
Replica uses Artificial Intelligence to create the next generation of games, films, music, and other media. Their technology provides creative people with access to millions of ‘Replica’ voice actors on demand.
- Founders: Shreyas Nivas, Riccardo Grinover and Keni Mardira.
- Noteworthy: Can artificial intelligence be used to create new revenue streams for artists, actors and influencers?
Marble AR – Germany / Los Angeles
Marble is building an Augmented Reality platform to create unique live music experiences with visuals, lights, sounds, physical object interactions, and audience participation.
- Founders: Tom Brückner and Paul Wehner
- Noteworthy: With more and more artists and venues offering live AR experiences, the need to create, integrate and control those experiences needs to evolve.
Mila – Paris, France
Mila creates digital versions of proven music therapy methods to diagnose and rehabilitate neurodevelopmental disabilities. We transform conventional therapy into an engaging experience through gamification, musical personalization, and voice and gesture control. Mila interprets these data into neurological indicators to optimize therapy’s benefits while reducing drop-out rates.
- Founders: Kenneth Burns, François Vonthron and Antoine Yuen
- Noteworthy: Sometimes keeping children engaged in their therapy is the largest single driver of real results. Can musical games increase engagement and thus increase child health?
Rhinobird – Santiago, Chile
Interactive video software. Rhinobird’s focus is to design interactive video players that engage audiences with the screen more than any other video player in the market. By delivering multi-video reproduction and multi-angle synchronization, together with tools for user interactivity, Rhinobird is helping leading content creators and media platforms innovate and engage with their users.
- Founders: Felipe Heusser and Sebastian Echeverria
- Noteworthy: Media companies are launching their own branded streaming services left and right — but how do those broadcast style video experiences compete/compare with interactive social media stories?
EmbodyMe – Tokyo, Japan
EmbodyMe is building an app called Xpression, which will allow you to create realistic imaginative videos with deep learning. Pick any video from YouTube — and use your face to control the face of the person in the video in real-time — and then record and share the new video.
- Founders: Issay Yoshida
- Noteworthy: The age of video remixing — where the contents of the video can be controlled — is coming.
Signal Distribution – New York, NY
Details on this company will be revealed at a later date.
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