Medallion is a digital hub platform for artists to promote album releases, tour dates, and merchandising where artists can sell digital collectibles and share exclusive content to build deeper connections with fans.
Recently, Medallion announced the closing of a $13.7 million Series A funding round co-led by Dragonfly and Lightspeed Faction.
Today, musicians are increasingly looking for direct ownership in their own communities, avoiding the complex management of interactions with fans on third-party platforms. From a fan's perspective, while there are many ways to follow and connect with an artist, these online interactions can be minimal.
Matt Jones, co-founder and CEO of Medallion, said: "While streaming has opened the avenues for music and social media and created new channels for direct communication, the full potential of artists connecting directly with their fans has yet to be realized. Medallion's artist-centric approach and emphasis on digitally native fan experiences are helping artists usher in a new period of transformation. ”
With this sizable funding, Medallion hopes to address what many artists see as a major problem in the music industry: a lack of control over their online relationships with fans and an inability to reach fans directly. Medallion explained that it plans to use the new funds to launch new services, such as listening to pre-release music and offering advance tickets, as well as other membership benefits such as "video premieres or new updates." In addition, artists will soon be able to sell new exclusive limited digital collectibles/NFTs, such as poster bundles and trading cards.
Medallion recently launched a new revenue-generating opportunity for artists in the UK, Australia and Germany, allowing artists to sell digital versions of their music albums with embedded music players and downloadable audio, images and videos. Artists can also sell physical goods through the integration with Shopify.
Artists can use Medallion for free, but a percentage of all sales on the platform is not disclosed. It is built on a blockchain, and users can log in via email or wallet providers (Rainbow, Coinbase, and WalletConnect).
In addition, Medallion is a "white label platform," which means that artists can customize their own digital spaces with their own color themes, backgrounds, and more. When fans set up an account, they receive a one-of-a-kind digital collectible or membership card called a "badge" that gives them free access to the community. For example, the Greta Van Fleet's logo is a rotating 3D gold ring.
Artists communicate with their fans through social media posts, who can reply in comments. Some artists have even asked the community to submit concert clips and photos to share with the community to further increase fan engagement.
There are currently 20 artists using Medallion to support their fan communities, including Jungle, Greta Van Fleet, Illenium, Disclosure, Tiga, Mt.Joy, Tycho, My Morning Jacket, Girl in Red, and Sigur Rós, to name a few.
"Over the past year, we've been working closely with a select group of artists to help them test and refine our core product features," said Jones. Although the platform is not yet available to all artists, we continue to invest in our technology and platform so that we can eventually expand to the industry as a whole. Currently, we mainly work with independent-minded artists who are among the top 10,000 artists on streaming platforms with a highly engaged fan base. ”
The company plans to expand the platform's availability to a few hundred more artists in 2024. The platform will not be widely available until 2025 or later.
Medallion is led by Jones, Chief Technology Officer Mark McIntyre, Chief Operating Officer Josephine Yu, Vice President of Operations Jesse Bellin, Chief Financial Officer and General Counsel Adam Ray, Vice President of GTM Ash Pampati, and Vice President of Design Tom Milway, all of whom are veterans of the technology, e-commerce and music industries, having worked on Songkick, Instagram, Worked on YouTube, Spotify, Grailed, Warner Music Group, and Live Nation.
本轮融资的其他投资者包括Coinbase Ventures、Infinite Capital、J17、The Chernin Group、Third Prime和Zeal Capital，以及音乐行业投资者Bill Silva Entertainment、Black Squirrel、Foundations Artist Management、Method和TAG Music。 Medallion还得到了顶级艺人Jungle、Mt.Joy、Guy Lawrence（Disclosure）和Tiga的支持。
To date, the company has raised $22 million.
Rob Hadick, general partner at Dragonfly, said in a statement: "Artists are starting to realize that they are not only content creators, they are brands themselves, and as a result, they are building multi-modal businesses that go beyond music and content. ”
参考来源：techcrunch
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