Uppbeat music platform
U.K.-based music platform Uppbeat has been developing a service that makes it easier for content creators to find quality free music to use in their videos published to platforms like YouTube, Twitch, TikTok and others. Now with more than 500,000 users on board, the startup is announcing the close of its £4.6 million GBP ($6.15 million USD) Series A funding round to help further grow its business.
Uppbeat was developed by Lewis Foster and Matt Russell, the U.K.-based co-founders of another music-licensing company, Music Vine. The founders realized there was an opportunity to put their expertise to work to address the growing need to offer a free music resource for the creator space. Today, over 100 million people share content across social platforms, but there weren’t that many great options for free, but high-quality, music the founders believed.
First launched in January 2021, Uppbeat helps to eliminate the headaches that come with copyright claims on music used within creator content. It does so by offering an alternative to expensive music licensing platforms as well as free music options like YouTube’s Audio Library or Creative Commons‘ music.
Leveraging a freemium model, Uppbeat allows creators to sign up for an account that provides access to around 50% of the site’s catalog and provides 10 downloads per month. The Premium subscription ($6.99/mo) provides full access and unlimited downloads (a three-year and lifetime subscription is also available).
Because music tracks have to be fingerprinted to fight off unlicensed usage, a copyright claim will still occur when using Uppbeat music, but the system will look for the necessary credit then clear the claim automatically, in about five minutes. Free users simply add a credit to their YouTube video description to clear the copyright claims, while Premium users on YouTube can whitelist their channel to automatically protect against copyright claims.
The system isn’t limited to YouTube — the music and effects can work on nearly any platform used by streamers, podcasters, bloggers and other social media creators.
Uppbeat artists, meanwhile, keep total ownership of their music and are paid on a rev share basis.
The company says it’s now taking on more than 75,000 new users per month and traffic to its site is topping 1 million sessions per month. Retention is high and bounce rates are low, at less than 10%, the startup told TechCrunch. Average session times are over five minutes.
Uppbeat music platform
