New startup pushing into the digital rights management minefield

revelator logo smallRevelator, a B2B music tech startup, has raised $2.5 million. The company is the latest to try pushing into the field of digital distribution, sales, licensing, and analytics. This round will support its efforts in global expansion.

“The majority of players in the media and collective rights industry still rely on outdated means of tracking distribution and payments, and have completely failed to adapt or modernize their infrastructure to properly handle the explosion of data, channels and new business models,” said Bruno Guez, CEO and Founder of Revelator. “An integrated and cloud-based platform such as Revelator is able to provide attribution, reporting and business intelligence from one dashboard, enabling distributors, record companies, publishers, managers, artists and songwriters access to their sales and marketing data wherever they are.”

We’ve seen many new businesses emerge to try out solutions to the black box problem of music licensing. TuneCore founder Jeff Price started a venture called Audiam that was recently purchased by a Canadian collector. Existing parties such as Kobalt and SESAC have also made efforts to simplify or improve their licensing tools. As with any startup, Revelator will face a challenge in getting users. A tool for better royalty collection only works if people use it, and trying to muscle into this crowded and confusing niche may prove difficult.

Anna Washenko