GigsWiz, a Helsinki-based analytics service for the live music industry, has grabbed €150,000 in a seed round of funding.
The service basically helps music bands interact with their fans with a widget on their site. During the beta phase bands can collect requests from fans – “where do you want us to play live?” – through the GigsWiz tool on their websites. They can then view the data plotted on a map or as charts and lists. “So far bands have had a rather vague picture of their regional and international fan base by looking at the traffic to their web pages. Now they can measure the actual interest to attend a concert and be inform the fans when the tickets come on sale” says Juuso Vermasheinä, responsible for customer development.
The funding is a combination of €100,000 share capital raised from Ideable Venture Fund and local angel investors and €50,000 government subsidy from the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation. GigsWiz will use the funding to boost its product development and start sales and business development activities in the UK market. They also plan to have some major integrations with other online music services.
“We see great potential in the transition that is taking place in the music industry. Records sales will continue to decline and artists will have to rely on concert revenues in the future,” says Mikael Kylätie CEO and fund manager of Helsinki-based Ideable Venture Fund. “The tools for optimizing those concert revenues are urgently needed.”