Hello Music, LLC, a Los Angeles, CA-based digital music company dedicated to connecting talented musicians with career opportunities, has received $4m in private equity financing from KVG Partners.
In conjunction with the round, Dick Kiphart, the lead investor in KVG, principle at William Blair and Company, and president and CEO of The Lyric Opera of Chicago, has joined the company as chairman of the board.
Hello Music was conceived and incubated by Wilshire Media Group, a digital music product design and development firm founded by Zack Zalon and Brendon Cassidy.
Zalon and Cassidy have extensive music and technology track records. They were the first two employees at Farmclub.com in the late 1990s, and President and CTO, respectively, of Virgin Digital, Richard Branson’s digital entertainment platform group.
After seven years with Virgin, in 2006 they formed Wilshire Media Group.
Hello Music’s business model is simple.
Artists upload their music and input their information at HelloMusic.com.
From there, the company’s team filters the quality of the music submissions and determining where they fit into the musical landscape.
The Hello Music team evaluates the music in advance for partner companies, giving them a clear professional assessment about all the music on the service.
At the same time, it gives the artist feedback to assist with their career development and connect them with the right Hello Music partner opportunity, which will initially come from AudioMicro, Getty Images, GigMaven, LyricFind, MediaNet, Next Big Sound, Slacker, Topspin, TuneCore and Yahoo! Music.
If the partner yields revenue for the artist, the revenue will be shared between Hello Music and the artist.
Terms will depend on the specific opportunity, and the artist always has the option to decide whether they want to participate with a particular partner.
FinSMEs
22/01/2010