Rockbot provides a mobile-driven virtual jukebox for bars, restaurants and other brick-and-mortar locations, enabling venues to play licensed music while customers check in and influence playlists. The product supports pay-to-play song selection and voting, and offers venue controls for larger multi-location chains. Rockbot has expanded from single proprietor bars to major franchises and enterprise customers, including JetBlue, Lucky Strike, Station Casinos, Buffalo Wild Wings franchises, Harrah’s Casino, Burger King, and Pinkberry. The company reports active locations growing 20% month-over-month and 300% growth in the first half of the year, with users engaging an average of 22 minutes when visiting customer venues. Management plans to use the investment to accelerate expansion across U.S. bars, restaurants and other venues and to capture more of the addressable market of over 2 million brick-and-mortar locations visited by more than 100 million smartphone users daily. Rockbot also emphasizes venue-level music controls to meet the needs of larger franchise customers. Roqbot offers a mobile app that turns internet-enabled devices into a social jukebox, allowing users at participating venues to check in, request songs, upvote tracks, and view venue specials while the venue retains control over allowed songs. The app runs on iPhone and Android and connects to a venue’s sound system, and Roqbot has rolled out partnerships with retailers and brands including Gap, Miller Lite, Samsung and bands like Motley Crue. It has streamed over one million songs from a library of more than six million tracks, and recently launched a “Mix Machine” feature that blends user and venue preferences to generate custom playlists. Roqbot is pursuing national expansion and is running a “Jukebox Reborn” campaign that encourages users to recommend the service to venues via Facebook. The company plans to add staff following its recent seed raise to accelerate sales and rollout, though its sales team is currently small. Roqbot’s monetization includes in-app credits that let users buy songs via Amazon or PayPal or use a credit card to add tracks not in the queue.

Total raised

$1M

Funding rounds

2

Latest round

Seed

Latest activity

Jun 2012