NEW YORK NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Audiobyte™, the parent company of Gifnote®, today announced it has completed a $6 million Series A financing round. The company has partnered with the music industry to bring Songbytes™—byte-sized music clips—into social and text messages to enable richer communications, deeper artist promotion, and drive music consumption. To date, Gifnote has built a patented technology platform that includes a proprietary database and search engine of licensed Songbytes. Available for consumers as an iOS app and at gifnote.com, the company has also recently launched its API for social and digital platforms. Currently, the API is available for Slack and will be announcing additional integrations soon.
Working in partnership with the music industry, Gifnote provides a simple and effective way for music to be integrated into the 10 billion pieces of byte-sized content shared daily across text and social channels. The company works with the music labels, publishers, artist managers, artists, and back-end reporting platforms to ensure compliance and thought leadership in this new space.
The lead investor for Audiobyte’s Series A round is Evolution VC Partners, the investment vehicle of Gregg Smith, a culture-tech investor who also joined Audiobyte’s board. Other strategic investors include leaders in the consumer, music, and mobile space including Northwood Ventures, DG Incubation (Digital Garage Group), Joi Ito’s Neoteny 4, Brett Berish, CEO of Sovereign Brands, Andrew McKee, Co-Founder of Hear Music, and Michael Shalett, Co-Founder of Soundscan.
“Messaging has become the most relevant cultural platform for communication and self-expression, and when combined with music can enable a level of emotional context far beyond silent emojis, photos, or GIFs,” said Gregg Smith of Evolution. “The combination of Gifnote’s API technology platform and their partnership with the music industry uniquely positions the company as a leader in music messaging.”
Gifnote is the category pioneer for powering music and audio as a form of communication across all digital and mobile platforms. The new investment will help build upon Gifnote’s engineering, search engine, and the continued deployment of its API.
The Series A financing builds on the past year’s successes including Gifnote landing a coveted spot as Apple’s “App of the Day,” and “New Apps We Love.” Additionally, two senior executives recently joined the executive team: Erin Johnson, the former Chief Communications Officer at J. Walter Thompson Worldwide, was appointed Chief Communication Officer and Richard Johnson, the former Co-Founder and President of Qello, was named as Executive Advisor. These appointments add further expertise to the current roster of music, mobile, and brand experts who have joined Gifnote from such companies as Bandsintown, HearMusic, and Soundscan.
“Music and messaging are a natural fit with global scale and fascinating implications,” stated Andrew Blacker, Audiobyte CEO and Co-Founder. “We remain dedicated in our mission to support the music industry in the new landscape of ‘byte-sized’ communication while elevating messaging with music’s universal appeal.”
ABOUT GIFNOTE®
Gifnote is a music app that uses patented and proprietary technology allowing people to ‘pair and share’ Songbytes—byte-sized music clips of the world’s most popular songs— with GIFs, videos and photos. Working in partnership with the music industry, including Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and Sony Music Entertainment, Gifnote is the only fully-licensed and compliant music messaging app and API. Gifnote is the first product from its parent company, Audiobyte™, and was recently named Apple’s “App of the Day.”
ABOUT AUDIOBYTE™
Audiobyte is the creator of a patented and proprietary technology platform, database and search engine of legally compliant Songbytes™—byte-sized music clips. With its scalable API, Audiobyte powers communication using five to fifteen-second clips of popular music across all digital and mobile platforms. Its debut product, Gifnote™, has been featured as Apple’s “App of the Day.”
