Tunecore Founders Jeff Price and Peter Wells Raise $500K For Audiam
(UPDATED) Tunecore co-founders Jeff Price and Peter Wellls have raised $500,000 for their music tech startup, Audiam. Investors include TuneSat CEO Scott Schreer, TuneSat COO Chris Woods, PTC Advisor's Tom Cohen and entrepreneur Jonathan Siegel. The funding will be used to fuel U.S. expansion of the YouTube monetization service.
According to Audiam's founders, every month on YouTube 25 billion videos are viewed containing music. Of those, half generate an estimated $1.3 billion in advertising revenue that, to date, has gone to high traffic
artists and labels. Audiam provides a system for those 12.5 billion views to generate revenue.
"YouTube is just an exploding opportunity for musicians," investor Chris Woods told Billboard. "It had $4 billion in ad revenue last year, and that's growing to to $5 billion this year. There's a need for a company like Audiam to watch out for the interests of independent musicians",
Another key Tunecore staffer, David C. Willen, who was Chief Technology Officer for the digital distributor has joined PrIce and Wells at Audiam.
UPDATE: Other staff
additions include Michael Gavigan and Bryan Hoffman as Directors of Artist
Licensing, Royalties & Administration.
Gavigan started his
career in the music industry interning for music startup RightsFlow in the
summer of 2009. Hired as a full time employee within a year, Gavigan learned
the ins and outs of mechanical licensing. After about 18 months of working
there, RightsFlow was acquired by Google. Hoffman held Publishing Research
position at YouTube, who acquired Rightsflow to handle their
licensing division.
