20 Flourishing Digital Media Startups
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The internet has revolutionized the way we consume media.
Instead of the newspaper, there are now hundreds of news sites and apps with content curated by algorithms.
Instead of the radio, there are podcasts on thousands of topics covering every niche interest imaginable.
Instead of expensive cable TV, there are streaming platforms that offer hours upon hours of free or low-priced content.
Digital media, no matter the type, is big business. We’ve researched trending companies in different areas of the media umbrella to bring you 20 diverse digital media startups that are changing the face of news, entertainment, and advertising.
1. Artlist
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2016
Location: Tel Aviv, Israel
Funding: $48M (Series Unknown)
What they do: Artlist provides royalty-free background music and sound effects for advertising, film, and other digital media applications. Works created using Artlist include the travel film 3 Years 30 Countries by filmmaker Sam Newton and a Mercedes-Benz commercial. After a sizeable funding round in 2020, Artlist brought on several new executives in mid-2021. Among them, product veteran Asaf Porat, who formerly worked at Wix and Fiverr, took on the position of VP of Product, and Ilil Livnat, a legal professional with a background in media, signed on as General Counsel.
2. Vietcetera
5-year search growth: 515%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2016
Location: Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Funding: $2.7M (Series A)
What they do: Vietcetera is a news media startup focused on a global audience of Vietnamese readers, amounting to around 20M readers per month. The startup offers written, video, and audio content in two languages across multiple different categories. Investors such as Go-Ventures, Genesia Ventures, and Z Venture Capital contributed to a $2.7M pre-Series A round that the company will use to expand beyond its initial Gen Z/millennial focus.
3. Restream
5-year search growth: 300%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2014
Location: Austin, Texas
Funding: $53.4M (Series A)
What they do: Restream is a social video broadcasting startup used by media, brands, public figures, and more to share content. The platform allows customers to share content across multiple networks at the same time, pre-record streaming videos, and more. Restream last raised $50M in August 2020, at which time its valuation was upwards of $17M.
4. Songtradr
Search growth status: Peaked
Year founded: 2014
Location: Santa Monica, California
Funding: $101.2M (Series D)
What they do: Songtradr is a music licensing platform that connects artists and music creators with opportunities to monetize their music through licensing deals for films, TV shows, commercials, and other media projects. The platform offers a user-friendly interface for uploading and managing music, as well as powerful search and discovery tools for music supervisors and producers to find the right tracks for their projects. Songtradr also provides tools for managing rights and royalties, making it a one-stop-shop for music licensing and monetization.
5. Podscribe
5-year search growth: 99X+
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2017
Location: New York, New York
Funding: $500K (Convertible Note)
What they do: Podscribe is a startup that offers transcriptions for podcast creators. The company touts accurate transcriptions powered by AI and offers additional features, such as an SEO-friendly feed for transcripts. Podscribe, formerly a podcast player company, pivoted to its current services in 2016.
6. SmartNews
Search growth status: Peaked
Year founded: 2012
Location: Tokyo, Japan
Funding: $410.3M (Series F)
What they do: SmartNews is a Japanese news startup that uses technology to deliver impactful and important articles to readers. Popular with readers in Japan and beyond, the app doubled its number of users per month in 2020. In addition, the “double unicorn” startup has raised a considerable amount of over $400M with a recent $230M Series F in September 2021. With this investment, SmartNews leadership is eyeing further expansion into the U.S. market.
7. Data Skrive
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2013
Location: Seattle, Washington
Funding: $6.3M (Series A)
What they do: Data Skrive is a platform that leverages technology to deliver SEO-optimized content for sports media companies, betting businesses, sportsbooks, and more. Founders Greg Bennett and Jordan Nilsen started Data Skrive in 2013 as a media company and publisher and moved into content automation in 2017 as an answer to their own scaling problem. In October 2021, Data Skrive announced over a $6M investment from Bettor Capital and others.
8. Curastory
5-year search growth: 0%
Search growth status: Peaked
Year founded: 2019
Location: New York, New York
Funding: $6.6M (Seed)
What they do: Curastory helps creators produce and monetize video content by working with brand sponsors like Beyond Meat and others. CEO Tiffany Kelly, former Sports Analytics Associate at ESPN, founded the company in 2019 to make it easier for student-athletes to monetize their content. Her accomplishments include striking a partnership with the NBPA (National Basketball Players Association) and raising $2.1M in H2 2021.
9. Podfund
5-year search growth: 0%
Search growth status: Peaked
Year founded: 2018
Location: Sommerville, Massachusetts
Funding: Undisclosed (Seed)
What they do: Podfund, operated by TechNexus Venture Collaborative, is an investment firm that focuses on funding podcast media companies. The company offers investments of up to around $150,000 as well as helpful business resources to creators in the podcast space with a successful track record and a plan for the investment. Podcasts like theNewsWorthy from Erica Mandy, Malcolm Gladwell’s Pushkin Industries, and Stacey Book’s Fugitive Media have received assistance from Podfund, which has received a little over $2M in seed funding for itself.
10. Fanatiz
Search growth status: Peaked
Year founded: 2017
Location: Miami, Florida
Funding: $17M (Series B)
What they do: Fanatiz is a digital media company focused on providing sports content on multiple devices, including desktop, mobile, and TV. Users can view global content and personalize their subscription based on their favorite sports team. The company announced a $10M Series A funding round in early 2020 with plans to expand to a global audience.
11. Asian Boss
5-year search growth: -50%
Search growth status: Peaked
Year founded: 2013
Location: Seoul, South Korea
Funding: $1.5M (Series A)
What they do: Asian Boss is a South Korean digital media outlet catering to a global millennial audience. The company, which boasts viewers in over 130 countries and more than 4.5M fans, aims to give its audience an authentic view of Asian life, news, and culture. Asian Boss confronted a possible shutdown in January 2021 but later created a crowdfunding campaign to save their business that ended up raising over AU$700,000.
12. Philo
Search growth status: Peaked
Year founded: 2010
Location: San Francisco, California
Funding: $133.2M (Series D)
What they do: Philo is a digital media startup that offers an affordable streaming service for entertainment content. With a focus on delivering live TV and on-demand programming from top cable networks, Philo provides its users with a diverse selection of shows, movies, and sports events. Philo's user-friendly platform, which allows for simultaneous streaming on multiple devices, has made it a popular choice among cord-cutters looking for a budget-friendly alternative to traditional cable TV.
13. Lingokids
Search growth status: Peaked
Year founded: 2014
Location: Madrid, Spain
Funding: $22.5M (Series B)
What they do: Lingokids is an interactive language learning platform designed for children between the ages of 2 and 8. The platform offers a variety of games, songs, and other activities to make learning a new language fun and engaging for young learners. Lingokids covers a range of languages, including English, Spanish, French, German, and Mandarin, and provides personalized learning plans and progress tracking to help children learn at their own pace.
14. Streamlabs
Search growth status: Peaked
Year founded: 2014
Location: San Francisco, California
Funding: $36M (Series B)
What they do: Streamlabs is a software suite that provides tools for live streaming and content creation, primarily for gamers and other online creators. The platform allows users to easily set up and customize their streams with features such as alerts, overlays, chatbots, and donation tools. Streamlabs also offers analytics and monetization options to help streamers grow their audience and generate revenue from their content.
15. Greenfly
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2014
Location: Santa Monica, California
Funding: $36.9M (Series Unknown)
What they do: Greenfly helps businesses collect and leverage digital media from brand advocates and other sources. Applications include gathering promotional videos from TV or movie actors, helping brands collaborate and connect with ambassadors, and promoting social causes. The startup, founded by former MLB player Shawn Green and Harvard Law School alum Daniel Kirschner, serves more than 500 organizations and has generated over 2B social engagements. In summer 2021, Greenfly attracted investments from several venture capital firms as well as Chris Paul of the Phoenix Suns.
16. O9 Solutions
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2009
Location: Dallas, Texas
Funding: $533M (Private Equity)
What they do: O9 Solutions is an AI-powered platform that provides integrated planning and operations solutions for businesses across the digital supply chain. The platform offers advanced analytics, automation, and optimization tools to help businesses improve their decision-making processes and enhance operational efficiency. O9 Solutions serves a variety of industries, including retail, consumer goods, manufacturing, and logistics, among others, and has been recognized as a leader in the field of digital transformation and planning.
17. Uscreen
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2014
Location: Washington, DC
Funding: Undisclosed
What they do: Uscreen is a video monetization platform that enables creators and businesses to sell and distribute their own video content through branded websites and apps. The platform offers features such as video hosting, payment processing, subscription management, and audience analytics, allowing users to create and manage their own streaming services. Uscreen's user-friendly interface and customizable design options make it a popular choice for those looking to monetize their video content and build their own online video businesses.
18. Bluepad
5-year search growth: 50%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2020
Location: Bangalore, India
Funding: $219K (Pre-Seed)
What they do: Bluepad is a vernacular Indian language content sharing startup that encourages users to distribute news, articles, and other written deliverables with a wide audience. Founders Devakrishna Asokar, Sanjyot Bhosale, and Kishore Garimella created the company to offer speakers of regional Indian languages online resources for sharing and consuming written media. The startup raised nearly $250K from investors in early October 2021 in a pre-seed round.
19. Nextup
5-year search growth: 26%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2016
Location: London, England
Funding: $2M (Grant)
What they do: Nextup is a British subscription-based comedy streaming platform featuring specials and shows from comedians such as Josie Long, Dane Baptiste, Jordan Brookes, and more. In addition to receiving venture capital funding, the startup overshot its crowdfunding goal of £150K on CrowdCube by over £100K.
20. Zencastr
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2014
Location: Salt Lake City, Utah
Funding: $4.6M (Series A)
What they do: Zencastr is a podcast platform that helps creators produce high-quality audio recordings plus video recordings through a beta offering. Reportedly the podcast choice of 6% of podcasters worldwide, Zencastr was bootstrapped until a $4.6M Series A round, announced in early 2021.
Conclusion
While this list features a varied group of companies, there are a few key trends that stick out: international news startups, podcast-related companies, and niche or no-cost streaming services. Based on search interest, there’s a potential for this group of startups to make a significant impact in the digital media space.
