Sesame Summit 2026 – application open

10 Music Startups to Watch in 2023

Get Moments

Get Moments, finalists of Music Tectonics, is a platform bridging the gap between music and sports events and their global fan communities. It generates personalized video highlights of events, allowing fans to share custom video clips worldwide. This enhances user-generated content (UGC) and transforms it into powerful promotional material that generates revenue.

Aux

Aux, winner of MusicAlly Connect 2022 Startups Showcase Award, is poised to revolutionize the way artists connect with the music industry. They aim to empower the next wave of a million music creators in their journey towards successful careers. The platform provides informative pieces covering music careers and production, how-to guides, and editorial reflections on the ever-evolving music industry landscape.

White music mixing dials
Photo by Alexey Ruban / Unsplash

AlphaBeats

AlphaBeats specializes in stress management through music technology. The company raised $2.2M in total from investors such as LUMO labs and DeepTechXL. Their portable EEG headset provides real-time neurofeedback influenced by a user-curated soundtrack, thanks to their intelligent patented algorithm. It dynamically adjusts selected music to guide and influence brain activity.

Hoopr.ai

Hoopr.ai is India’s pioneering music licensing platform, addressing the challenge faced by content creators and businesses—finding and licensing the perfect music for videos. They aim to monetize music for musicians while offering intelligent music recommendations, streamlining the search and discovery process. Hoopr raised a total of $1.5M in funding over 2 rounds.

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Photo by Kelly Sikkema / Unsplash

Soundful

Soundful is a standout in the AI music space, known for its high-quality and customizable compositions. The company raised $3.8M in the Seed round in 2021. Using advanced algorithms, it creates unique AI-generated music tailored to user preferences and styles, making music creation accessible to everyone.

Un:hurd

Founded in 2019 in London, Un:hurd empowers artists with marketing support and growth opportunities while allowing them to retain ownership of their music and content. The company secured around €250K in 4 funding rounds. Using AI and proprietary technology, Un:hurd transforms music data into powerful promotional campaigns, achieving significant traction with minimal marketing efforts.

Sing your Heart out!
Photo by israel palacio / Unsplash

SYNKii

SYNKii, raising €100k investment at Amsterdam Dance Event (ADE) & Antler Startup Competitionin 2022, positions itself as ‘the professional alternative to Zoom for online music lessons.’ Their platform simplifies communication between students and teachers, making online music education more accessible and efficient.

ANote Music

ANote Music, securing $2.2M in 6 rounds, allows artists generating revenue to list their music catalogs, enabling retail investors to benefit from passive income and revenue. It bridges the gap between music and finance, democratizing music investment. Stakeholders receive a ‘VIP treatment,’ including exclusive rewards and opportunities.

Contact Festival | Marshmello | BC Place, Vancouver, Canada | 2017
Photo by Aditya Chinchure / Unsplash

Songclip

Songclip is an all-in-one music licensing and integration app solution for consumer applications aiming to increase user retention rates. It streamlines the complex music licensing process, empowering rights holders to collect royalties from short-form content efficiently. Songclip secured a total of $22.9M in funding over 6 rounds with the most recent investment from iHeartMedia and Raised In Space Enterprises.

Beatoven.ai

Beatoven.ai, one of India’s first AI-powered web-based music composition platforms, democratizes music creation. The company raised $1M during the seed round with investment from Redstart Labs in 2022. It seamlessly blends advanced AI algorithms with creative imagination, empowering individuals, regardless of their musical background, to compose unique, royalty-free music for their content.


If you’re reshaping the music tech landscape like these 10 startups, join the music tech revolution at MIDƐM+ 2024!

Apply by October 8 to the Start-up Battles to win pitch time and network with industry leaders:

  • Rishti Das (Founder, Hivewire)
  • Bruce Hamilton (General Partner, Everybody Ventures)
  • Jean Bourcereau (Managing Partner, Ventech)
  • Lorrain de Silva (Managing Director, Best Nights VC)
  • Robin Wauters (Founder, Tech.eu)
  • and more, to be announced shortly!

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Events 10 hours ago

Last week, I spent three days at Bits and Pretzels in Munich — a startup-focused event with a distinctly Bavarian flavor. Think Oktoberfest meets startup conference, complete with dirndls, lederhosen, and more beer than you might expect. As someone building an AI-powered event platform, I went in with a specific mission: Observe how startups actually market themselves at events. Here’s what I discovered: GoodBytz: The power of good demos What they did: Robotics startup GoodBytz set up a booth where its robots prepared kaiserschmarrn (a traditional German dessert) all day long. Why it worked: Nothing beats seeing a product in action. While other booths had brochures and demos, GoodBytz’s robots were actually cooking. The smell, the movement and the end result stirred together an experience that people will remember and talk about. The lesson: If you have a physical product, show it in action. The old writing adage generalizes well: Show, don’t tell.  Let people see, hear and touch the product. WeRoad: The bathroom hack What they did: Posted “Missing Investor” flyers in bathroom stalls with QR codes pointing to their website. Why it worked: Pure genius. Every startup at the event was looking for investors, but the “Missing Investor” headline, while a bit on the nose, proved irresistible. Plus, bathroom stalls are one of the few places where people have 30 seconds to actually read something. The lesson: Think about where your target audience’s attention will remain undivided. Sometimes, the most effective marketing leverages the most unexpected places. Emqopter: Visual impact matters What they did: Designed a bright orange booth that displayed their drone prominently. Why it worked: In a sea of grey, white, beige and brown, Emqopter’s bright orange booth was impossible to overlook. The drone was real, too, and proved a real conversation starter. The lesson: Your booth is competing with hundreds of others. Make it visually distinctive and ensure your product is the hero. Quests: Community building using the product What they did: Created a busy, branded booth with accessories (toy car, traffic cones, a bulletin board) and used their anti-loneliness app to build communities among founders at the event. Why it worked: Quests used their product to solve a real problem right at the event, and the busy booth design generated energy and curiosity. The lesson: Use your product to solve a problem at the event — if it’s possible, of course. Demonstrate your value in real time. Dyno: Event-themed marketing What they did: Distributed branded electrolyte packs with the tagline “Your hangover ends. Your pension lasts – with Dyno.” Why it worked: Dyno aligned its messaging perfectly with the Oktoberfest theme. Every attendee was thinking about beer and hangovers, so Dyno’s goodies were quite relevant. The tagline was clever, memorable, and directly addressed a pain point most people at the event might have to deal with later. The lesson: Tailor your marketing to the event’s theme and culture. The more you tie your messaging and product to the context, the more memorable you become. So, what did I learn? Event marketing is about more than just showing up and setting up a booth; you have to understand your audience and create experiences that people will remember. Here’s what really struck me: most startups and even big companies don’t know how to leverage events properly. They book the booth, show up and hope for the best; maybe they bring some branded pens and a pop-up banner. Then they’ll go back home and wonder why they spent €5,000 in exchange for 50 business cards that never convert. The startups that stood out at Bits and Pretzels understand something fundamental: event ROI isn’t about booth size or location; it’s about strategy, creativity and planning. None of the startups above improvised on-site, or planned something the night before the event in their hotel rooms. They laid everything out 4-6 weeks before the event. A solid pre-event strategy is what separates successful event marketing from expensive booth rental.  But what matters most for early-stage startups is that you don’t need a massive budget to stand out. WeRoad’s bathroom stall hack probably cost €50 to print the flyers. A standard booth package at Bits and Pretzels would go for €3,000 to €5,500. The ROI difference is staggering when you compare the cost per meaningful conversation. That’s the difference between simply spending money and investing smartly. Building Sesamers has taught me that helping startups find the right events is only half the equation. The other half is helping them understand how to maximize ROI once they’re there. Good props aren’t a marketing expense; they’re opportunities to meet customers, investors and partners, and strike up engaging conversations.

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