Aussie Startups Expanding

Muzeek puts venues in touch with acts, managers, and bookers, announcing schedule details of each others’ availability. Venues are charged a commission on top of an artist’s fee for casual bookings or unlimited use for a monthly fee. The platform incorporates contracts and worksheets online. It is registered in Sydney and plans to incorporate shortly in the United States where it has 2,500 accounts, co-founder Danny Fiorentini told Pollstar.

Fiorentini is based in Las Vegas where he runs Outbox Records. He set up the platform after finding the gigs booking process for his acts slow and inefficient. His partners included a handful of venue bookers, musicians and digital executives. Muzeek also has 2,500 accounts in Australia, split 75 percent between acts and 25 percent venues, promoters and bookers. Its key accounts in the U.S. include Iron City, Workplay and Young Giant Agency.

Fresh angel funding from Australia, Silicon Valley and Las Valley will be mostly invested to make the booking process more seamless and cost-effective for clients.

“We’re super focused on developing our technology to help expand the platform through autonomous customer usage,” Fiorentini said. While he expects expansion to be mostly through word-of-mouth recommendation, future global rollout faces a language barrier. “We’ve had a ton of requests to translate the site into other languages, so we’ll be working hard on making it easier to use throughout the world. But we’re taking it one step at a time right now.”

Sydney-based crowdfunding and ticketing platform GiggedIn plans to expand globally after a fresh injection of capital. Founder and CEO Edwin Onggo said that funding from business, technology and creative sectors was an affirmation of “the vision of our company as well as our management team. We’re excited about the impact we’ve had so far as well as working towards rolling out our offering on a global scale.”

GiggedIn launched November 2012 as a “Kickstarter for live music events.” Fans pledge to buy tickets to activate events. Giving them a say in location and support acts, it assured promoters and artists a guaranteed amount of presales for gigs, national tours and festivals. Sydney-based Social Family Group, which ran a campaign to find support acts for a national sellout run by female-fronted rock bands The Superjesus and Baby Animals, confirmed 30,000 fans voted from a selection of 250 applications.