Back to basics: Where music tech money really flows

In 2024, music tech investment took an unexpected turn: The biggest checks went to the industry's least glamorous problems.

Gone were the splashy bets on metaverse concerts, blockchain-powered royalties, and avatar superstars. Instead, these kinds of deals captured the year's narrative:

• Private equity giant Hellman & Friedman took control of performing rights organization Global Music Rights for nearly $3B.
• Universal Music Group is spending $775M to acquire Downtown's distribution infrastructure (pending regulatory approval).
• Live operations company atVenu raised $130M to help venues sell merch, food, and beverages more efficiently.

The shift from hype to infrastructure reveals an industry finally confronting its operational reality: For all of music's “digital transformation,” its core systems remain surprisingly antiquated.

Today's artists can command stadium-sized LED displays but still track their ticket sales manually in spreadsheets. Streaming services process billions of plays while artists and rights holders navigate byzantine payment systems, often waiting months for accurate earnings data.

Music's technology story has always run on parallel tracks. Consumer experiences — streaming, social audio, virtual reality — grab headlines. Meanwhile, the essential scaffolding of rights management, ticketing, and distribution quietly powers the industry's core functions.

In 2024, that backend infrastructure finally became the main character. Many forces drove this pivot:

• The post-pandemic live music boom exposed operational breaking points. As tours returned at unprecedented scale, dated tech systems and business models buckled under the pressure.
• A more cautious investment climate also demanded clearer paths to revenue. Instead of costly experiments with Web3 and metaverse plays, capital gravitated toward companies solving tangible, revenue-generating problems.

This report analyzes 140+ investments and exits across 38 countries from 2024, mapping capital flows that reveal music tech's new priorities. We explore:

• Why established businesses handling unglamorous problems are attracting unprecedented investment
• How venture capital, private equity, and strategic investors are carving out distinct niches
• Where infrastructure gaps create opportunities for entrepreneurs
• What accelerating consolidation means for every industry stakeholder

The story that emerges is less about reinventing the music business per se, and more about making its existing machinery actually work.

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Methodology

Our analysis draws from a proprietary database of 2024 music tech investments and exits, compiled in the first week of January 2025.

We define “music tech” generously, as the tools, platforms, and services that power how music is created, distributed, monetized, and experienced. This expands the scope beyond creation and production tools, into areas like ticketing, sync licensing, marketing analytics, artist financing, and much more.

We verified each deal through multiple sources:

• Public company financials and SEC filings
• Official company communications (e.g. blogs, press releases, social media posts)
• Third-party investment databases (e.g. Crunchbase, Tracxn, PitchBook)
• Industry media coverage (e.g. Billboard, Music Business Worldwide, Music Ally, TechCrunch)

While we strive for comprehensive coverage, this report inevitably represents a partial view of the music tech investment landscape. Private market data is inherently incomplete; many deals go unannounced, and crucial details like valuations often remain confidential.

Our coverage also skews heavily towards North American and European markets, which together account for 76% of deals and 78% of investors in our dataset. This reflects both our network's current reach and the broader challenges in tracking deals across emerging markets. Our deal coverage is particularly limited in regions like Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

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2024 by the numbers

All in all, we tracked:

• 110 investment deals totaling $978M (for comparison: Music Ally’s tally for 2015 was 36 deals totaling $1.76B)
• 39 exit deals worth $7.3B combined
• 204 active investors
• Deals across 38 countries in 6 continents