Chicago's music tech scene continues to grow.
Chicago-based startup Wavlake, a platform that gets musicians and artists paid through bitcoin, recently secured pre-seed funding led by Austin, Texas-based Trammell Venture Partners to help grow the platform. Hivemind Ventures also participated in the fundraising round.
While the total raised was undisclosed, Christopher Calicott, managing director at Trammell Venture Partners, said the company’s “disruptive” technology made it a good fit for Trammell, which tends to focus its investments on bitcoin-native technologies, applied artificial intelligence, and security and privacy technologies.
“Artists have never really been the true beneficiaries of the impact of technology,” he said.
He thinks Wavlake could change that.
"The concept of streaming music is still evolving," Sam Means, co-founder of Wavlake, told Chicago Inno. "We're seeing that subscription models really aren't scalable and subscription services are having to become content providers themselves. It's just not working."
Wavlake offers a music and podcast platform integrated with bitcoin's lightning network, allowing for a more direct connection between creators and consumers.
Wavlake co-founder Michael Rhee said the plan moving forward is to continue to build the platform’s creator and listener tools, both of which are going to enable artists and musicians to publish and distribute their work and receive bitcoin payments instantly from listeners who are using any application that's connected to the network.
He said they are also working to incorporate ways to incentivize listeners to contribute to artists, such as offering exclusive content, badges with the platform and other kinds of rewards.
The company expects to launch its studio and player products in the first quarter of 2023.
"There’s a strong and vibrant music scene and history of music here in Chicago, and there’s a strong tech community here as well, and I think there’s a great opportunity to build upon that history," Rhee said.
