Music analytics company Next Big Sound announced Tuesday it has raised $6.5 million in a Series A funding round led by IA Ventures and Foundry Group. The Boulder, Colorado-based company also announced the opening of an office in New York City.
Launched in 2009 as a graduate of the TechStars startup incubator, Next Big Sound offers both free and paid analytics that incorporate a variety of social media data. The funding will help it maximize the understanding of the data it has accumulated, CEO Alex White tells Billboard.biz.
Data is hot right now: Next Big Sound’s funding comes just weeks after Live Nation acquired BigChampagne to improve its customer experience. The rise in publicly available social media data has given need for better tools for understanding and acting on that data, says White. “A few years ago, the savviest people in the music industry were doing all this by hand.”
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IA Ventures is a new investor in Next Big Sound. The firm actually specializes in companies that work with data. IA’s portfolio includes group-buying company Yipit and The Trade Desk, which helps clients manage large advertising promotions. Early investor Foundry Group also participated in the round. Next Big Sound had raised a bit less than $1 million in seed funding prior to this Series A round.
White says the new funding will help the company’s expansion. Next Big Sound currently has just 10 employees. A New York office will not only put the company closer to its customers, it also means greater access to talent to improve its music analytics product, says White. “All of this has been done in finance and tech industries.”