Uppbeat, a music platform based in the United Kingdom, has been working on a service that will make it easier for content creators to find high-quality free music to use in their videos on platforms such as YouTube, Twitch, TikTok, and others. The startup is announcing the close of its £4.6 million GBP ($6.15 million USD) Series A funding round to help it grow its business, now that it has over 500,000 users.
Lewis Foster and Matt Russell, co-founders of Music Vine, a music licensing company based in the United Kingdom, created Uppbeat. The founders saw an opportunity to put their skills to work in order to meet the growing demand for a free music resource for the creator community.
Today, over 100 million people share content across social platforms, but the founders believed there were few good options for free, high-quality music.
Uppbeat, which debuted in January 2021, aims to alleviate the headaches associated with copyright claims on music used in creator content. It accomplishes this by providing an alternative to both expensive music licensing platforms and free music options such as YouTube’s Audio Library and Creative Commons music.
Uppbeat uses a freemium model, allowing creators to sign up for a free account that gives them access to about half of the site’s catalog and 10 downloads per month.
Full access and unlimited downloads are included in the Premium subscription ($6.99/mo) (a three-year and lifetime subscription is also available).
With an expansion to the site in September 2021, Uppbeat now offers a sound effects and clips library that works well for “meme-style” content in addition to music because music tracks must be fingerprinted to prevent unlicensed use, a copyright claim will still be generated when using Uppbeat music, but the system will automatically look for the required credit and clear the claim in about five minutes. To clear copyright claims, free users simply add a credit to their YouTube video description, whereas Premium users can whitelist their channel to automatically protect against copyright claims.
The music and effects can be used on nearly any platform used by streamers, podcasters, bloggers, and other social media creators, not just YouTube.
Meanwhile, upbeat artists retain complete ownership of their work and are compensated on a rev share basis.
According to the company, it now has over 75,000 new users per month and monthly traffic on its site has surpassed 1 million sessions. The startup told TechCrunch that retention is high and bounce rates are low, with less than 10%. The average duration of a session is over five minutes.
Uppbeat’s catalog has grown from a curated collection of 1,000 tracks to over 3,000 tracks, with 2,500 sound effects and clips added since its launch. Meanwhile, the company’s annual revenue run rate is $718,000, with Music Vine’s total revenue being around $2.4 million.
The company stated that they were unable to identify their Series A investor, a strategic backer and industry leader who did not wish to be identified.
Uppbeat says it will use the additional funding to improve its brand presence on YouTube by releasing music there and to form more direct partnerships with online communities.
It will also use the funds to revamp its backend and create a more intelligent user interface with personalization capabilities.
It also intends to roll out new features for creators, including one that allows them to curate and share their own playlists — a feature that could help Uppbeat artists gain more exposure and earn money. YouTubers have already collaborated with the company to create hand-curated “Partner Playlists” to showcase the music they typically use on their own channels.
