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Paste Media Group buys fan data platform NoiseTrade from flagging PledgeMusic

By | Published on Friday 26 April 2019

Paste & NoiseTrade

The Paste Media Group – which operates both Paste magazine and the Daytrotter live sessions series – has acquired direct-to-fan data gathering platform NoiseTrade from PledgeMusic. Terms of the deal are not known, but Paste will be making a bunch of Daytrotter sessions available to download via the NoiseTrade website.

Pledge bought NoiseTrade in 2016 in a bid to extend the range of direct-to-fan tools it offered artists that used its services. Although for music fans NoiseTrade was a source of free downloads, for artists it was all about accessing fan data in return for offering up some freebie content. It also provided a similar service for authors willing to give away ebooks.

There has been much speculation about what the future might hold for NoiseTrade since the Pledge company admitted it was experiencing financial difficulties last year, subsequently suspending artist payments in February. Sources said NoiseTrade was still running pretty much as normal, it operating more or less autonomously from its parent company. But obviously, if Pledge collapsed completely that could cause problems for the subsidiary firm.

A statement posted on the Paste magazine website yesterday confirming the deal began: “Today begins a new era of NoiseTrade with its acquisition by Paste”. The media firm then said of its new acquisition, “we’ve long been fans of the site’s ability to connect artists with new fans, and music fans with their new favourite bands”.

The statement went on: “We recently combined forces with Daytrotter to become the largest collection of live music performances on the internet, and we’ll be adding that library to NoiseTrade in the coming weeks, offering thousands of sessions to NoiseTrade’s already abundant offering”.

Meanwhile, in a short post over on Facebook, NoiseTrade itself said: “NoiseTrade has officially joined the Paste Magazine family! We’ll continue to bring you the best music and books content, including exclusive performances from the Paste Music and Daytrotter studios, along with interviews, reviews and more. The goal to connect artists and fans won’t change; we’ll just be doing it a whole lot more!”

We still await news regarding the future of the wider Pledge business, which still owes money to a plethora of artists who were running fan-funding or pre-order campaigns on the site when the financial issues got out of control. A co-founder of NoiseTrade recently remarked on Twitter that Pledge founder Benji Rogers had told him that a possible buyer for the business was still going through the due diligence process.



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