Songkick operates an app and web platform that scans a user’s music collection or streaming service (such as Spotify) to surface upcoming local gigs and enable ticket purchases. The company also provides artist-facing ticketing tools and has positioned itself as a way for acts to control sales and detect scalping. Songkick says the new funding will be used to enhance the connection between artists and fans, increase ticket sales and prevent scalping. The company merged with artist-ticketing service Crowdsurge in June 2016 to strengthen its position against dominant incumbents. Songkick has attracted major acts including Paul McCartney, Adele, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Metallica who use the platform for greater control over ticket distribution. The business recently expanded its U.S. presence, is opening a West Coast office and has made senior hires. Songkick is a concert discovery app and ticketing company that merged with white-label artist-to-fan ticket seller CrowdSurge. Post-merger it has shifted into selling tickets directly for artists while continuing to help fans discover concerts. In the last six months it has tripled ticket sales across Europe by partnering with artists including Kenny Chesney, J Cole, Jess Glynne, Metallica, Mumford & Sons, and Stereophonics. The company says it aims to reduce unsold tickets—citing that 40–50% of concert tickets go unsold each year—and to curb ticket touting through proprietary technology. Songkick cites working with Adele to sell over 165,000 tickets on Adele.com, selling 40% of UK/European tickets directly, identifying over 18,000 known or likely touts and resulting in reported under 2% of tickets on the secondary market. Its product focus is on direct-to-fan sales and anti-touting tools to boost artists' performance revenue. Songkick’s core product is a concert discovery app that displays local shows and lets users track favorite artists; it reports 10 million monthly active users. CrowdSurge provides white-label, direct-to-fan ticket ecommerce storefronts and counts roughly 500 top acts as clients. The two companies have merged under the Songkick name in a 50-50 stock-for-stock split and are led as co-CEOs by Songkick co-founder Ian Hogarth and CrowdSurge founder Matt Jones. The combined business aims to both inform fans about nearby shows and transact tickets directly, letting artists capture a larger share of ticket revenue. Songkick previously raised $16.6M from Y Combinator, Betaworks, Sequoia, and Index; CrowdSurge has counted Access as an investor. The merger is positioned to help Songkick compete with discovery rivals like BandsInTown and to challenge ticketing incumbents by selling more tickets directly to fans. Songkick enables users to follow music artists, track live events and purchase tickets, with distribution partnerships across Yahoo, YouTube, Foursquare, Spotify, Vevo, MTV and Soundcloud. The company lists over 100,000 upcoming concerts and has indexed more than 2 million gigs with reviews, set lists, videos and photographs. It attracts about five million unique users per month and is the second-largest concert site after Ticketmaster. Founded in 2007 by Ian Hogarth, Michelle You and Pete Smith as an early Y Combinator company, Songkick launched an iPhone app that reached 100,000 downloads in its first two weeks. Financially it has raised roughly $17 million to date and recently closed a $10 million B round. The company is expanding with a San Francisco office and reports that users go to almost twice as many gigs the year after they start using Songkick. Songkick is a London-based concert listings service that lets music fans track bands, follow tour dates and buy tickets. The platform is currently available in five countries. The company says it will use the new funding to expand the platform and launch new products. Prior to this round Songkick had raised $1.02M from Y Combinator, SoftTech VC and The Accelerator Group. Index Ventures led a $4M Series A and Saul Klein of Index will join Songkick's board. Index's investment fits its strategy of backing entertainment-oriented startups such as Listen.com, Last.fm and Viagogo.

Total raised

$55M

Funding rounds

6

Latest round

Equity

Latest activity

Aug 2016