Show4me, a $1 per year music platform, raises $15M funding
Show4me, a music interaction network, has raised a $15 million investment. The funding round was led by a German investment firm, the name of which has not been disclosed, the CEO and co-founder of the startup Karen Chiftalaryan told AIN.UA.
The company will use the funds to intensify its competing ability in the European market and further develop the product. In particular, the development and launch of a metaverse for artists on the platform.
About Show4me
Show4me was launched in 2015 by Karen Chiftalaryan and 11 other partners. It is the second funding round for the startup; previously, show4me had raised $12.8 million from a British IT investment company. According to Chiftalaryan, the startup already has about $30 million in investments together with the contributions of the founders.
Show4me is a music social media for interaction between fans and musicians. Musicians create their artist clubs based on the platform, where they can manage the online component of their business — make live streams, sell tickets, distribute merch, and, of course, share exclusive content: tracks, albums, etc.
Fans can access the artist clubs by subscription. Show4me has a unique business model — any artist club membership costs a flat $1 a year. The service fee is 15%, and an artist gets the rest. This way, musicians can monetize their fan base much more effectively than on Facebook, Instagram, and other social media sites.
According to Chiftalaryan, this monetization model is a win-win for both the service and the musicians.
“If we consider, for example, Spotify, Deezer, or any other streaming platform, I’m not even mentioning YouTube, which pays pennies, you need 400,000 streams to make $1,000. Depending on the country, that number of streams could be generated by about 120,000-130,000 fans. So our $1 is the same as if you had 400 listens on Spotify beforehand,” Chiftalaryan explained in a comment to AIN.UA.
Today there are over 30,000 musicians registered on the platform. Every month Show4me has 3,000-5,000 new registrations from artists. At the moment, the main task of the startup is to increase the number of users brought to the platform by the musicians themselves.
Launch in Ukraine
The service is available in 198 countries. It does not work in Ukraine yet. Show4me plans to launch in the Ukrainian market in Q1 2022. So far, payments from Ukraine are not accepted. The main startup markets are the United States (50% of business) and the EU (30%). The other markets make no more than 20%.
Currently, the startup is not profitable, but according to Karen Chiftalaryan, it can achieve self-sufficiency by the end of 2022.
Show4me now employs over 70 people. It has offices in Berlin and London. There is currently no office in Ukraine.