Rights management company Kobalt Music Group has raised $75 million in a Series D funding round. The Hearst Entertainment media conglomerate led the financing, and existing Kobalt backers Balderton Capital and MSD Capital also participated. The funding will support scaling of Kobalt’s royalty collections platform.
“With the high growth of streaming and the billions of microtransactions that take place per song, the music industry is more complex than ever,” Kobalt CEO and Founder Willard Ahdritz said. “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.”
“The music industry is growing revenue again and it’s due to the meteoric rise of music streaming on services like Spotify, Apple, Google, Amazon and Pandora,” said Neeraj Khemlani, president of Hearst Entertainment. “Willard has brilliantly positioned Kobalt to be an important company at the center 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.”