25 Soaring Music Technology Companies & Startups
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According to the IFPI Global Report, global music sales reached $28.6 billion. That's an increase of 10% and marks the ninth straight year that global music sales have grown.
Paid streaming subscriptions like Spotify and Apple Music were the primary drivers behind the growth. Currently, there are more than 667 million paid subscription users (up 13% from 589 million).
Other factors, such as the blockchain and the continued rise of networking platforms, contributed to this consistent growth.
This list presents 25 trending startups that are making an impact on the music space.
1. Tracklib
5-year search growth: 436%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2014
Location: Stockholm, Sweden
Funding: $20.9M (Series A)
What they do: Tracklib is a library that allows content creators to sample music for their projects. For $5.99 a month, users get licensed download access to over 100,000 songs and tracks. The platform has attracted significant music personalities varying from platinum artists such as J Cole to Grammy-winning producers such as Questlove.
2. Artlist
5-year search growth: 270%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2016
Location: Tel Aviv, Israel
Funding: $48M (Series Unknown)
What they do: Artlist is a music licensing platform that provides filmmakers, video creators, and other creative professionals with high-quality, royalty-free music and sound effects. With a focus on simplicity and affordability, Artlist offers a range of subscription plans and a diverse catalog of tracks that can be easily searched, downloaded, and licensed for use in a variety of creative projects.
The platform also offers a suite of intuitive and innovative tools that enable users to easily integrate music into their projects and share their work with others. Today, Artlist has more than 26 million total users.
3. Suno
5-year search growth: 8,200%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2022
Location: Cambridge, Massachusetts
Funding: $125M (Series B)
What they do: Suno is an AI-powered music creation platform that generates realistic lyrical and instrumental songs from text prompts. Users can describe the type of song they want, and Suno can create the full song with vocals, lyrics, and instrumentation.
In May 2024, the startup raised $125 million in Series B funding. Today, Suno is one of the most widely used AI tools.
4. OneOf
5-year search growth: 47%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2021
Location: Miami, Florida
Funding: $72M (Undisclosed)
What they do: OneOf is a cooperative community for artists and fans. With a $0 minting cost, OneOf offers musical artists a way to create their digital assets at low prices and minimal environmental damage.
5. SoundBridge
5-year search growth: 17%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2014
Location: Brighton, Massachusetts
Funding: Undisclosed (Non-Equity Assistance)
What they do: SoundBridge is a digital audio workstation designed to be accessible. While building the workstation, the company had one thing in mind, “deliver a super simple workstation that anybody can use.” SoundBridge’s only round of funding to date has come from Northeastern University when it joined its venture accelerator.
6. Stationhead
5-year search growth: 1,060%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2017
Location: New York, New York
Funding: $25M (Series A)
What they do: Stationhead is a live-hosted music streaming platform that allows users to share playlists, host their own 24/7 radio station, and interact with listeners through live chat and call-in features. Users can access a full catalog of songs, create playlists, and access previously recorded broadcasts by linking their Spotify or Apple Music accounts. The platform has over 7 million total users, including 1+ million downloads on the Google Play Store.
7. Moises.ai
5-year search growth: 9,000%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2019
Location: Salt Lake City, Utah
Funding: $10.4M (Seed)
What they do: Moises provides users with an AI-driven audio manipulation and music practice platform. The primary features of this platform include audio separation, pitch changing, tempo adjustment, chord detection, and more. The company claims to have more than 30 million registered users, including 10+ million Google Play Store app downloads.
8. Dice.fm
5-year search growth: 8,400%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2014
Location: London, United Kingdom
Funding: $200M (Series Unknown)
What they do: Dice.fm is a ticketing platform for live events, such as concerts, festivals, and comedy shows. This startup focuses on the fan experience by offering a wide selection of live events, show recommendations and upfront pricing. In August 2023, Dice raised $65 million in Series D funding.
9. Tunify
Search growth status: Peaked
Year founded: 2012
Location: Houthalen, Belgium
Funding: Undisclosed
What they do: Tunify has created software that personalizes playlists. The software is intended to help businesses quickly stream the correct type of music for their image. Initially, users answer some questions that allow the algorithm to recognize what type of business it is. Then, based on the answers to the questions, the software comes up with a tailored playlist that can stream immediately. Tunify’s clients can choose from three software packages, depending on the features they need.
10. Earbuds.app
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2017
Location: Austin, Texas
Funding: $6M (Series A)
What they do: Earbuds is a music sharing app that allows users to build and share playlists with friends, even if they use a different music streaming service (Apple Music or Spotify). Key Earbuds app features include automatic collaborative playlists, chat functionality, AI-driven mini-games, and music recommendations. The startup has raised roughly $6 million with investments from NFL quarterbacks Patrick Mahomes and Baker Mayfield.
11. Chartmetric
5-year search growth: 70%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2015
Location: Pao Alto, California
Funding: $2M (Undisclosed)
What they do: Chartmetric is a music data analytics platform that gathers from 30 different sources, including Spotify, Apple Music, TikTok, etc. Artists and music professionals rely on the platform for key insights like streaming KPIs, popularity scores, track analytics, and much more. As of 2024, the platform tracks data on over 9.7 million artists.
12. Volta
5-year search growth: -2%
Search growth status: Peaked
Year founded: 2019
Location: London, England
Funding: $3.8M (Seed)
What they do: Volta combines music with virtual reality. This allows artists to create mixed reality experiences and performances. Another unique Volta feature is that artists can broadcast their events from the app into streaming platforms, such as YouTube and Twitch. The platform is still in its testing phase and users can join a waitlist to get early access.
13. Sunhouse
5-year search growth: 8%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2014
Location: Long Island, New York
Funding: $94K (Seed)
What they do: Sunhouse has developed a technology they call “Sensory Percussion” that, simply put, supercharges your drum set. This allows drummers to control melodies and harmonies, add orchestra and combine samples from different songs, all on their drum set.
The technology is powered and supported by artificial intelligence, sensors, and signal technology. Having come out of New York University’s venture incubator, Sunhouse is backed by Backstage Capital, Magic Carpet, and Futureworks.
14. Epidemic Sound
5-year search growth: 124%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2009
Location: Stockholm, Sweden
Funding: $508.9M (Private Equity)
What they do: Epidemic Sound is a cloud-based music library. It offers a catalog of music tracks that can be used in different digital media projects. Instead of buying the rights to a single track, users can subscribe to Epidemic Sound’s library and get legal rights to over 35,000 tracks and over 90,000 sound effects. Although the $1.4B-valued startup is still burning money, it reported a 49% YoY revenue growth in 2020.
15. UnitedMasters
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2017
Location: Brooklyn, New York
Funding: $170M (Series C)
What they do: UnitedMasters is a music distribution and marketing service. Artists can release their music right from iMessage into all major streaming platforms. The New York-based startup also helps artists connect to major brands such as Apple Music, the NBA, Bose, the NFL, and more.
16. Uppbeat
5-year search growth: 7,800%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2021
Location: Leeds, United Kingdom
Funding: $5.9M (Series A)
What they do: Uppbeat is a royalty-free music platform for content creators and businesses. It makes high-quality music more accessible to use in videos, podcasts, and other media projects. The platform has more than 1 million total users.
17. Artiphon
5-year search growth: 13%
Search growth status: Peaked
Year founded: 2011
Location: Nashville, Tennessee
Funding: $4.7M (Series Unknown)
What they do: Artiphon is the manufacturer of Orba, a MIDI controller that helps artists create songs. The controller can interpret tapping, waving, and sliding. And can seamlessly switch between violin, piano, drums, and guitar. Artiphon initially raised $1M in pre-orders before their official launch.
18. Heir Apparent
5-year search growth: 40%
Search growth status: Peaked
Year founded: 2017
Location: Los Angeles, California
Funding: $10M (Seed)
What they do: Heir Apparent is a music discovery application. Artists upload their projects into the application. And fans vote on projects that they enjoy. Songs that get positive feedback are rewarded with tangible rewards, as well as clout. Heir Apparent’s rewards are powered by its own digital currency called Crown. The startup’s project is still in its testing phase.
19. Songfinch
5-year search growth: 950%
Search growth status: Peaked
Year founded: 2016
Location: Chicago, Illinois
Funding: $31.3M (Series A)
What they do: Songfinch is a service that generates personalized songs. Users can go into the platform and request a song for an event (i.e., an anniversary) and the startup’s artists will create a piece suited to that occasion. Songfinch collaborates with artists who have played in over 10,000 concerts and have over 200M streams on different platforms.
20. Audius
5-year search growth: 350%
Search growth status: Peaked
Year founded: 2018
Location: San Francisco, CA
Funding: $13.6M (Series Unknown)
What they do: Audius is basically SoundCloud on the blockchain. The platform is governed by the $AUDIO token that gives users voting rights regarding the future of Audius. The startup is backed by world-renewed artists such as deadmau5, who serve as an advisor.
21. Sonarworks
5-year search growth: 2,800%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2012
Location: Riga, Latvia
Funding: $12.5M (Series Unknown)
What they do: Sonarworks is sound calibration software. It allows users to calibrate sounds and adjust the music they listen to depending on their preferences. For creators, the software calibrates their speakers and headphones so that artists can hear their music at the highest quality possible. Their award-winning technology has been used by over 55 Grammy-winning artists and producers.
22. BeatBread
5-year search growth: 2,900%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2020
Location: Los Angeles, California
Funding: $34M (Seed)
What they do: BeatBread is a music technology company that offers a range of solutions for music creators and artists. Their main product is a cloud-based music collaboration platform that allows musicians to collaborate remotely in real time. BeatBread also offers music distribution services and a royalty collection platform for independent artists.
23. Tunetank
5-year search growth: 2,500%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2018
Location: Los Angeles, California
Funding: Undisclosed
What they do: Tunetank provides users with a library of 10,000+ royalty-free music tracks and sound effects. Users can also access the platform's suite of AI tools to create custom tracks by inputting a text prompt. The platform's straightforward licensing terms are beneficial to creators, making it easy for creators to produce new content.
24. Humit
5-year search growth: 14%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2017
Location: Bengaluru, India
Funding: Undisclosed
What they do: Humit is a music-sharing and discovery application. The application is fully integrated with Spotify, meaning that users can share snippets of all songs on the Spotify platform. To make Humit more accessible, the startup is looking to integrate with Apple Music, Amazon Music, and other popular streaming platforms.
25. 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 marketplace. What makes Songtradr different from other similar startups is that it is B2B-focused. Instead of allowing everybody to get access to licensed music, Songtradr is intended to connect artists with brands, labels, and other digital platforms. The company was valued at $879 million after its funding round in November 2023.
Conclusion
This concludes our list of music and music technology startups worth keeping an eye on.
As seen from our list, startups competing in this sector are building the marketplaces, platforms, infrastructure, and instruments that are changing how music is created, listened to, shared, and financed.
