Providing background music services to the chain brands, Soundtrack Your Brand raised $22 million in Series C funding

Yesterday, Spotify's co-venture corporate streaming music service Soundtrack Your Brand announced a $22 million Series C funding round led by Industrifonden and British Balderton Capital, with the participation of Telia Company, Northzone, Creandum, HMP and Jörg Mohaupt. The company plans to use this round of funding to "consolidate product leadership" and further expand its product market globally.

Founded in 2013 and headquartered in Stockholm, Soundtrack Your Brand was co-founded by Ola Sars, one of Beats co-founders, and Andreas Liffgarden, former head of global business development at Spotify. The company's goal is to fill a gap in the background music market today, because the most common situation now is that brand merchants use their own CD sets or directly subscribe to CDs, and the cost of music updates is not low; or merchants play music through satellite or ordinary wireless channels, so that the selectivity of music is out of control. Meanwhile, streaming music services like Spotify are only available to non-commercial individuals.

Soundtrack offers two core products: Spotify Business available in Sweden, Norway and Finland, and Soundtrack Business available in the rest of the region. These two products are basically B2B versions of the pop streaming service, capable of providing some additional features, such as managing playlists in multiple locations from a central hub. So, if you're managing a big chain of brands like Starbucks, you can have remote control over the music in each store.

Previously limited to Scandinavia, Soundtrack Your Brand products were officially launched in the U.S. last May and coincided with the announcement of a "Global Framework Agreement" with McDonald's to provide streaming music services to McDonald's more than 36,000 stores.

Liffgarden said: "For brands and consumers, the background music can be said to be very bad now, which is a damage to the entire music industry. As lovers of music and technology, we want to revolutionize the industry and completely eliminate inferior background music. ”

Following this financing, Balderton Capital's partner Lars Fjeldsoe-Nielsen will join Soundtrack Your Brand's Board of Directors. Fjeldsoe-Nielsen, who previously held leadership roles at Uber and Dropbox, said: "I've seen these changes firsthand: Dropbox makes storage cooler and transforms from consumer to enterprise; Uber has changed the way we think about mobility; and Soundtrack will play such a transformative role for the background music industry." ”

Many brick-and-mortar retailers use background music as a medium to influence consumer behavior, so they also have potential profit margins for customers who want to get their business through streaming. Many businesses are still using old-fashioned CDs, so there's plenty of room for Soundtrack to get involved.

Sars, co-founder and CEO of Soundtrack Your Brand, said: "Our competitors are still mailing CDs to large chain stores in the Us and Europe, and we are digitally expanding our market size, being more efficient and able to continuously improve the product experience. By selling online, we are able to reach the entire market. ”

Competitors for Soundtrack Your Brand include Mood Media, Play Network and ImageSound. Since its inception, the company has received a total of $33 million in financing, of which in June 2015, Soundtrack raised $11 million in Series B funding, with Spotify participating. The company said that the company's total revenue and customer base have now increased by 400%, but did not disclose the specific revenue and number of customers.