Jungle, one in all Medallion’s artist customers and buyers. Picture Credit score: Medallion
Following a multimillion-dollar seed elevate – and however knowledge displaying a falloff in Web3 funding – artist-to-fan group platform Medallion has introduced a $13.7 million Sequence A.
New York Metropolis-headquartered Medallion emailed Digital Music Information with phrase of the practically $14 million spherical. Based in 2022 and billed as a supplier of “web3 know-how that helps artists launch digital worlds,” Medallion intends to place the capital in the direction of “an bold technical roadmap,” together with the event of “internet new income alternatives” for on-platform acts.
Among the many latter are Santigold, Greta Van Fleet, and My Morning Jacket, to call some, with Medallion indicating that it additionally “scaled to over 200,000 music followers in its first yr.”
On the factors’ intersection, the platform says its artist communities have achieved faster development than their counterpart teams, communities, and servers, respectively, on Fb (a mean of 86 p.c extra members on Medallion), Reddit (161 p.c), and Discord (206 p.c).
Relating to Medallion’s backers, self-described “cross-border crypto enterprise fund” Dragonfly Capital and Lightspeed Faction co-led the Sequence A, which drew further assist from Coinbase Ventures, Foundations Artist Administration, and Metallica’s Black Squirrel Companions, in addition to numerous others.
“Medallion is constructing the infrastructure to allow artists to straight work together with their highest intent clients via new and unique merchandise and experiences,” summarized Dragonfly basic associate (and Goldman Sachs vet) Rob Hadick, “whereas concurrently proudly owning the client relationship themselves and driving internet new income alternatives round their IP. We consider this paradigm shift will permeate throughout the whole lot of the creator economic system.”
In the meantime, in a press release of his personal, Medallion head Matt Jones, beforehand CEO of Songkick, touched upon the significance of offering diverse choices by way of companies that facilitate direct-to-fan interactions.
“Artists proudly owning direct entry to their followers is crucial, however in addition they want extra methods to ship worth for it to drive impression,” communicated Jones.
Medallion isn’t alone in working to assist artists extra successfully monetize the assist of diehard followers, and the superfan house has drawn a considerable quantity of funding on the yr. Earlier in December, Renaissance revealed that it had raised $1.7 million throughout two rounds, as an example.
Earlier than that, November had seen Vault Music, a Web3 enterprise co-founded by former FanDuel CEO Nigel Eccles, launch a fantasy file label sport described as “fantasy sports activities however for the music trade.” That very same month, We Are Big formally debuted and disclosed an virtually $8 million elevate.