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Spotify-backed Swedish startup raises $22m to bring music streaming to businesses around the globe

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By Robyn Darbyshire | Junior Content Editor

February 20, 2017 | 3 min read

Soundtrack Your Brand, a company that wants to bring music streaming to businesses, has closed a $22m funding round to ramp up global expansion.

Soundtrack Your Brand is known as Spotify Business in Finland, Norway and Sweden.

Soundtrack Your Brand is known as Spotify Business in Finland, Norway and Sweden.

The funding round was led by first-time investors Nordic VC fund Industrifonden and Balderton Capital, as well as previous investors such as Telia Company, Northzone, Creandum, and HMP.

Background music should be a key element of a brand’s in-store identity, according to the Spotify-backed Swedish startup. “Background music today is sold as a utility, and there’s rarely much thought going into what music brands are playing and why,” said chairman and co-founder Andreas Liffgarden. “As brands digitise their retail environment, music is now coming into focus. When CD’s were the media of choice, flexibility was low. With modern streaming solutions flexibility is high and therefore music becomes more important.”

Soundtrack Your Brand was founded by ex-Spotify exec Andreas Liffgarden and Beats Music co-founder Ola Sars in 2013. The pair built a music streaming service that manages licenses for businesses and lets them control music across multiple stores.

So how do you decide what your brand should sound like? Seemingly, there’s a methodology that can be followed: “First, we look at the brand. Who are they, what do they wish to communicate? Are they modern or traditional, inclusive or exclusive, human or technological, easy going or serious? From this we find music that fits these qualities, we then further distill this into tracks that fit the brands demographic. Finally we schedule the music based on the flow of a retail week,” explained Liffgarden.

Known as Spotify Business in Finland, Norway and Sweden, Soundtrack Your Brand doesn’t have license to use Spotify’s branding outside those markets. The startup currently works with the likes of McDonalds, Toni & Guy, TGI Friday as well as thousands of small to medium sized businesses.

Balderton Capital general partner Lars Fjeldsoe-Nielsen, previously head of mobile at both Uber and Dropbox, will join Soundtrack Your Brand’s board of directors. He said in a statement, “I’ve witnessed disruption first hand. Dropbox made storage cool, and achieved a shift from a consumer to a business proposition. Uber changed the way we think of transportation. Soundtrack Your Brand will do the same thing to background music.”

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