UNIFIED & Alberts back live music marketplace Muso

A couple of major names in the music business have invested in tech start-up Muso, a live music marketplace facilitating bookings between artists and venues.

Muso revealed today that is has raised $1.5 million in seed funding, with ambitious plans to accelerate growth, expand its operations and build out its core team.

Among the local music companies to contribute were Alberts Impact Capital and UNIFIED Music Group, both of which have an impressive history of championing new acts.

"The investment reflects Alberts heritage, its long association with the music industry and ongoing support of pioneers passionate about live music,” says Alberts chief executive David Albert.

Early-stage investment group Investible led the capital raise, which also included investment by some notable angel investors.

Muso was also selected for the Sydney-based Startmate accelerator in January and showcased at the well-attended BIGTECH event at BIGSOUND 2019 - ultimately won by another one-to-watch, on-demand streaming revenue provider, Paperchain.

Founded in 2018 by co-founders, Jeremiah Siemianow, Brandon Crimmins and Alan Jin, Muso has certainly struck a chord with artists and venues across Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

“We started Muso after realising there was a real disconnect between musicians and venues on a local level. Many venues struggle to find musicians and DJs, while musicians end up wasting time and energy securing gigs and chasing payments," Siemianow said.

Over 1800 new gigs have been created within its platform since launch, resulting in 900 gigs booked and 750 gigs already played. There are already 150 venues and 850 artists using Muso.

“Live music is hard to organise, especially if you're not networked or if you're time-poor. Because of this, we realised there was a massive lost opportunity for local live music," Siemianow added.

We found that if we made live music easier to organise, more venues would begin hosting it, in turn creating more opportunities for musicians."

Muso plans to become the go-to marketplace for booking undiscovered talent and a springboard for artists launching into professional music careers.