trac, a music-tech startup, raises $2.5 million in a pre-seed round led by Lagos, Nigeria-based Zrosk Investment Management—with participation from AppWorks, InfinityVC, Calm Company Fund, Dapper Labs, as well as key angels including Roham Gharegozlou and Siqi Chen.
trac offers a platform to music artists to monetize their content, name, and likeness directly with their fans. Founded in 2020 by tech and marketing leader Cardin Campbell trac intends to tokenize the music industry.
Campbell has had worldwide marketing and technology responsibilities with global brands such as Intel, Nike, Expedia Group, and most recently Peloton during his nearly 20-year career, in addition to being a singer, songwriter, and producer earlier in his career.
“Our long-term vision is to tokenize the economy around the artist, using smart contracts and the blockchain to help them sell their music, build their brand/community and track their impact more effectively and efficiently.”
Los Angeles-based trac plans to use the funding to scale the business and increase its market reach while expanding its engineering and operations teams.
trac began by providing free music distribution on platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, Youtube, and Tidal—and is quickly expanding to include other integrated products to provide the ideal artist stack, bridging the Web2 and Web3 divide. The startup is working on a new DAO for artists that will run on their own unique artist tokens and incentivize interaction.
trac will use the technology to help artists in such a way that they will not need to worry about the technology.
“Artists shouldn’t have to worry about technology—what’s a blockchain, an NFT, or even how to work a crypto wallet. They should have a platform at their fingertips that they can trust that is always innovating and creating opportunities for them to monetize their passion,” said Campbell.
trac’s pre-seed funding coincides with the increase of self-releasing artists, who are driving streaming music development, and with major labels being surpassed by the independent sector due to technological advancements.
Samson Esemuede, Chief Investment Officer at Zrosk, said:
“The recording industry is ripe for disruption and has been for years. It’s an industry where many artists struggle with building a fanbase and monetizing their career. We were captivated by Cardin’s passion and his vision for tokenizing the music industry, that not only solves these age-old problems but finally flips the industry right side up. In addition, as Afrobeats is becoming one of the biggest cultural exports from the African continent, trac provides the sort of infrastructure that ensures that the value generated from such exports is extracted by the people responsible for creating them.”
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