A Swedish licensing platform for original music, Freshsound, has nabbed €1.3 million pre-seed funding. The investment came from a group of renowned angel investors and family offices, including Aligned Ventures, Kristina Tunkrans (former Partner at Cederquist, CEO of PRMD publishing/AtNight and Chief of Music, Epidemic Sound), Shiv Prakash (former VP of Investment, Hipgnosis Song Fund), Marcus Konstantino (Partner, HDR Partners), Gustav Nordlindh (Founder and CEO at Royal Streaming), Kim Fai Kok and Dara Gill (Framtid).
Ambitious growth plans
The new funding will facilitate the Freshsound’s plans to rapidly accelerate its commercial expansion, expand its catalogue, product development and R&D, and launch its licensing platform in the Nordics, Germany and UK. Also, the company will use the fresh capital to continue onboarding exceptional talent to the company.
Besides, the company has recruited Helen McLaughlin, former Managing Director of Warner Music Sweden, Head of A&R at Sony Music Sweden, Head of A&R and Business Development at The Kennel and CEO at V2 Music Scandinavia to lead its expansion of catalogue.
“The sync and licensing market is still stuck in the pen and paper era, and is yet to be digitized. While it is growing and we see an increased demand for quality music, the process of licensing songs is too complex and time consuming. This results in songwriters and artists losing out on potential profits, while creators and storytellers are missing the opportunity to get the perfect song for their visual content. We want to ensure that the rights holders remain in full control and ownership of their rights and to make it easier than ever to license premium music.” said Stephen Gyasi, CEO & co-founder of Freshsound. “We are also very proud to bring onboard Helen McLaughlin as our Head of Catalog. She’s a respected name in the industry that brings enormous experience and know-how to Freshsound.”
Helen McLaughlin, Head of Catalogue at Freshsound said, “I am very humble to the complexity of clearing music, but the need of a tool to make the process quicker and more seamless yet still allowing creators and rights holders to set their own terms and requirements in what context their music should be available for customers is paramount. I am really excited to join the Freshsound team as the platform offers all of this – even allowing it on a track by track basis – whilst keeping the pricing individual and matching available works with whatever the sync customer is looking for.”
Automated pre-cleared licensing platform
With the massive growth of content marketing and streaming services creating original content, the need for premium and original music is higher. However, licensing original songs for commercial use can take months to complete. Freshsound was founded in 2021 by Stephen Gyasi and Sara Larsson in Stockholm. It ensures that content creators and storytellers are enabled with the best possible music for their visual content in a friction-free way.
The company has created an automated pre-cleared licensing platform and a marketplace for original music that removes all the friction of negotiating and lets creators and storytellers instantly license premium songs for their content. Also, the platform has a music discovery feature and a dynamic pricing model that instantly gives clients a quote for any type of use.
Freshsound has signed agreements with over 60 labels and publishers, fully pre-clearing the music and is continuously adding more songs. Big ad agencies like McCann and Forsman Bodenfors use Freshsound’s platform for their campaigns.
