L.A. Music-Tech Startup trac Raises $2.5M to Create the Operating System for Artists’ Careers, Bridging Web2 and Web3

LOS ANGELES–(BUSINESS WIRE)–trac, a music-tech company, today announced it has closed a $2.5 million pre-seed round led by Lagos, Nigeria-based Zrosk Investment Management—with participation from AppWorks, InfinityVC, Calm Company Fund, Dapper Labs, as well as key angels including Roham Gharegozlou and Siqi Chen. trac will use the funding to scale the business and increase its market reach while expanding its engineering and operations teams.

Founded in 2020 by tech and marketing leader Cardin Campbell, trac is a one-stop-shop for artists to monetize and manage every aspect of their careers so they can build more sustainable financial futures. trac first launched by giving artists free music distribution on platforms such as Spotify, Apple Music, Youtube, and Tidal—and is quickly adding on other integrated products to create the ultimate artist stack, bridging Web2 and Web3. The company will soon begin creating decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) for artists that will run on their own unique artist tokens that incentivize engagement.

“Artists shouldn’t have to worry about technology—what’s a blockchain, an NFT, or even how to work a crypto wallet. They should have a platform at their fingertips that they can trust that is always innovating and creating opportunities for them to monetize their passion,” said Campbell, who has held past global marketing and technology roles at world-class companies over the course of his nearly 20-year career including Intel, Nike, Expedia Group and most recently Peloton—in addition to being a singer, songwriter, and producer earlier in his career. “This capital allows us to continue to scale as we gain more trac(tion).”

trac’s capital raise coincides with the rise of self-releasing artists who are leading streaming music’s growth and as technology has led to major labels being outpaced by the independent sector.

“The recording industry is ripe for disruption and has been for years. It’s an industry where many artists struggle with building a fanbase and monetizing their career,” said Samson Esemuede, Chief Investment Officer at Zrosk. “We were captivated by Cardin’s passion and his vision for tokenizing the music industry, that not only solves these age-old problems but finally flips the industry right side up. In addition, as Afrobeats is becoming one of the biggest cultural exports from the African continent, trac provides the sort of infrastructure that ensures that the value generated from such exports is extracted by the people responsible for creating them.”

For more information, visit http://www.trac.co.

About trac

trac is an artist monetization platform. We provide the virtual infrastructure every artist and their teams need to easily monetize their content, name, and likeness directly with their fans. Our long-term vision is to tokenize the economy around the artist, using smart contracts and the blockchain to help them sell their music, build their brand/community and track their impact more effectively and efficiently.

Contacts

Flight PR

Alysha Light

alysha@flightpr.com