Apps, Mobile & SMS

Smule Adds $38 Million In Funding For Music Apps, Social Network

image from khu.shSmule has moved beyond being just the creator of popular music apps. Smartly, they combined the apps into a popular music based social network, and today they were rewarded with $38 million in new funding.

 

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UPDATED: Smule has added $38 million in new equity and debt funding. Adam Street Partners led the equity round of $26 million with existing backers, including Bessemer Ventures and Shasta Ventures.  City National provided $12 million in debt financing. 

Adams Street partner Dave Welsh has joined Smule’s board. Founded in 2008, Smule has created a growing social network for musical performance powered by a family of apps including Ocarina, Magic Piano, Sing! Karaoke, Guitar! and AutoRap. 

The Smule community now performs 12 million songs a day and records 1.5 terabytes of content a day.  Revenue doubled year on year, in 2014, to $40 million, with Smule’s 350,000 subscribers representing 85% of its sales, according to the company.

“With as much disruptive power as the Sony Walkman or Apple iTunes, Smule is transforming a music industry characterized by a few dozen artists performing for billions of passive listeners,” said David Cowan of Bessemer Venture Partners, Smule’s first investor and board member. “Smule is proving that no one wants to just listen – we want to join the music through song, piano, guitar, composition, rap and dance.”

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