Baton raises US$4.2 million in funding for unreleased music & IP platform

A platform that helps artists with unreleased music has just been funded US$4.2 million. Baton, a start-up in the music industry, has made waves through its capabilities of creating collaborative music and IP portfolio management through blockchain.

Gabe Warshaw who is a musician himself created this platform to help artists, producers, creatives, A&Rs and managers share unreleased music, collaborate with others, find new talents and make sure proper credit is provided.

Within the music industry, there are many instances where tracks are being used without recognition and compensation…and this is where Baton comes in.

The platform uses a proprietary media player to show users if their original content has been misused even if it’s a sample, beat pack or song. It also uses blockchain to track IP rights so all transactions are fully transparent by its decentralised infrastructure.

“There are 100,000 songs released to streaming services every day, but most material is unreleased. We believe there’s tremendous untapped potential here,” states Gabe.

This idea struck Gabe as he grew up in a musical family and surrounded himself with artists in NYC who were continually struggling to do what they loved while keeping up with the standards of living.

Having launched its private beta edition in 2022, Baton has quickly built its platform in two years through a pre-seed round, and now with “BITKRAFT Ventures with participation from Techstars, Dorm Room Fund, NYU’s Innovation Venture Fund, the Berkley Center for Entrepreneurship, Dark Arts, Franklin Templeton, Harmonic Future, and industry-leading angels” with a hefty sum of US$4.2 million.

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The fund will assist the company with the development of Baton, the engineering of new features, growing its team and many more.

The platform has also helped prominent figures in the industry such as Grammy award-winning producer DJ Dahi and A&R guru Sickamore.

Read this next: How to get your track signed

There are also other artist-led initiatives contributing to beneficial music platforms, such as Richie Hawtin’s revenue-sharing platform, Aslice and Sama' Abdulhadi’s underground music platform, Resilience. There’s also Echio, a streaming platform that allows fans to interact with artists.

Try out Baton by signing up here.

Via: Music Business Worldwide

Miki Kitasako is Mixmag Asia’s Social Media and Content Producer, follow her on LinkedIn.