Six Music Start-Ups from the UK, Argentina, Canada & the US form 2022 Cohort

Marathon Music Group, has announced the new intake of music technology businesses taking part in its fourth ‘LABs’ startup mentoring initiative.

This year, the program’s focus is on tackling value creation. The six participating companies operate within a broad music & tech ecosystem centering on web3 applications, live entertainment within metaverse environments and broadening access to financial and data analytics for artists and their teams.

Marathon LABs specializes in generating business development opportunities for music start-ups and will help pilot case studies with each individual company before providing access to industry professionals in order to generate new business leads.

This new group of companies will look at innovative ways in which incremental value can be cultivated and established within the industry, both for artists and labels.

The cohort taking part this year come from Argentina, Canada, the US and the United Kingdom, with the program featuring both virtual and in-person meet-ups and events.

The companies joining the 2022 Marathon LABs program are:

MuXical: An immersive and interactive platform offering a broad range of experiences through virtual shows. Artists can stream performances on varying stages and environments to a live audience. Fans can create their own customizable avatars, chat with each other, invite friends and attend exclusive meet & greets with their favorite artists. MuXical deepens the artist’s relationship with fans while providing access around the world to experience the energy of live events within the Metaverse – an ecosystem that continues to grow and transform. They leverage augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technologies to stimulate a digital economy where artists can share and monetize experiences and IP.

RootNote: RootNote allows artists, managers, businesses, and other digital creators to simplify data and develop actionable insights from cross-platform analytics. The tool takes away the ambiguity of data analytics, granting users the ability to store all their relevant data in one place, including social media, streaming / views, and revenue. The company’s solution creates value by allowing artists and business partners to take control of their data by providing a real-time picture of fan engagement and income across multiple platforms. In a digital age where fans connect to music in a multitude of ways and across platforms, such tools are key to better understanding evolving fan bases and creative businesses.

Hidden Bands: A music discovery platform that uses augmented reality (AR) and geo-location technology to bring fans back into physical places to discover, rate and rehide unreleased songs from up-and-coming artists. With the metaverse rapidly expanding into augmented reality and technology providers building the next wave of AR devices, Hidden Bands gives up-and-coming artists the ability to engage fans in these new worlds. Boasting an international range of artists that have submitted songs to the platform and new ways for festivals, labels, and brands to jump onboard, Hidden Bands represents a new and innovative way for labels and artists to directly market unreleased songs to music fans.

RoyFi: RoyFi helps artists achieve and further their financial freedom by advancing capital on their future royalty earnings while allowing them to maintain complete ownership of their catalogs. Using machine learning technology, RoyFi has created an algorithm that underwrites advances on future earnings based on a broad data set of comparable tracks and the historical earnings power of the artist’s catalog. This technology, coupled with a creator-friendly funding approach, provides an innovative solution for professionals looking to better manage their works and catalogs. RoyFi’s advances are not credit based and have no late fees or risk of foreclosure.

Un:hurd: Un:hurd is a data-focused music marketing company. It encapsulates data from artists’ streaming and social platforms and turns it into actionable marketing insights. Clients can then tap into a full turnkey solution of services such as playlisting, PR, social media advertising and content creation all from their mobile phone. Its platform allows for artists, managers and labels to better grasp and utilize data that exists in multiple silos across the industry, generating clarity and deepening the understanding of one’s fanbase.

FROW: FROW is the first community-based marketplace and social platform that brings together music creators and music lovers. Its mission is to help the Creative Class to create engaging and authentic digital experiences to sell cultural goods, starting with Vinyl Records. The tools being developed will allow artists and labels to create additional sources of income while growing and nurturing the artist's fanbase.  

Alexandra Craissati, Innovation & LABs Manager, Marathon Music Group, “We’ve always launched LABs whilst looking ahead at our industry's future challenges and evolution. This new edition once again includes a diverse group of innovative startups that create value for artists and labels and reflect the daily marketing needs we’re dealing with today. We’re excited to support these forward-thinking Founders and CEOs as they aim to reshape the industry as we know it.”

Tanguy Giraud, COO, Marathon Music Group added “This cohort constitutes the best possible bricks of a constantly evolving "creator to audience value chain”. Marathon Music Group is eager to start implementing some of these new tools and services whilst we work to execute our artists vision”