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Kobalt secures $75 million in ‘growth capital’
By Chris Cooke | Published on Monday 8 May 2017
Drinks all round on Kobalt, I say. Actually steak dinners. I’d prefer a steak dinner. A fully transparent, tech-savvy, creator-friendly steak dinner, obviously.
Kobalt has raised around $75 million in growth capital via a new financing round led by media conglom Hearst Entertainment and also involving the money men at investment firms like Balderton Capital and MSD Capital. Which, all in all, is quite a lot of money. You could almost set a streaming service with that kind of money. Almost. Kobalt, though, will use the cash to “further scale its unique royalty collections platform to meet the demands of the global surge in music streaming”. Which sounds more sensible.
Says Kobalt boss Willard Ahdritz: “From the start, my vision for Kobalt has been to transform the music industry and help take it into the digital age. With the high growth of streaming and the billions of micro-transactions that take place per song, the music industry is more complex than ever. Guided by core principles of transparency, technology, and putting creators first, I have never been more sure that our platform, combined with our global creative team, is the right one to serve creators and rights owners in the rapidly evolving digital music environment”.
Meanwhile Neeraj Khemlani, President of Hearst Entertainment, said of his company joining the Kobalt party: “The music industry is growing revenue again and it’s due to the meteoric rise of music streaming. Willard has brilliantly positioned Kobalt to be an important company at the centre of this booming industry by building an invaluable platform for artists, songwriters and third party labels and publishers looking to have complete, real time transparency into how their music is being consumed and thereby collect royalty revenue more efficiently and faster than ever before”.
