Creatives everywhere have a passion for what they do, but that does not necessarily translate into success. They must painstakingly become champions of their own vision and work to fulfill their goals—an effort that, for many, only brings frustration. Breakr, a fast-growing music marketing platform, understands their pain, and is changing the world of content creation, business, and music by facilitating the intersection of commerce and content.
The music startup has a great collaboration story. Breakr founders Ameer Brown, Dan Ware, and Rotimi Omosheyin met while students at Florida A&M University. The college entrepreneurs promoted sold-out parties, learning first-hand the power of one-to-one communication and word-of-mouth marketing.
The founding team’s big break came when they were chosen as one of the seven companies of the alpha cohort of Andreessen Horowitz’s Talent x Opportunity Initiative led by a16z partner Nait Jones. The accelerator program provides funding, mentorship, resources, and community to underrepresented founders.
They launched their flagship product last year, a two-sided marketplace that connects influencers and content creators with musicians and businesses to easily craft creative paid organic content. Having just raised $4.2 million in seed funding led by Slow Ventures, Breakr has the support it needs for the explosive growth that is now underway. Over a period of one year, the startup’s platform has leveraged over 50,000 creators across 133 countries with an aggregate reach of more than 1 billion followers. It has provided an amazing 150 million views for emerging artists and put hundreds of thousands of dollars into creators’ pockets.
“Independent artists have more opportunities than ever to break through, but those opportunities have required busywork that should’ve been solved already,” said Tony Brown, Breakr’s co-founder and CEO. “Problem 1? Spending all day messaging to try and get your song heard. TikTok influencers have been pushing songs to the top of the charts, and with the shift to Twitch and Instagram Live DJ sets during the pandemic, we knew the world needed a solution.”
The readily evident and rapidly growing demand for creator monetization tools that Breakr identified is now being met by the funding the music startup raised—that will be used to staff out its product, engineering, and business development teams.
“Creators are increasingly at the forefront of brand and content discovery for consumers. Building tools to help creators manage and monetize is one of the most exciting opportunities in media today. Breakr is in a great position to build tools and services that not only add value to creators’ lives, but also anyone looking for distribution. We jumped at the chance to lead the round and are very excited about the role Breakr can play in the music industry and beyond,” said Will Quist, Slow Ventures.
Breakr was very successful in gaining broad investor support that includes many high profile celebrities and top leaders in creative industries such as Marc Benioff’s TIME Ventures, Nas, RGA Ventures/Coalition, Baron Davis, Quiet Capital, Kevin Mayer, Rich Riley, Tommy Duncan, Rich Antoniello, Nataly Langer, Dan Teran, Justin Waldron, Scott Depetris, Alex Lopez, Sterling Proffer, Mack Hollins, Matt Goetz, among others, as well as re-commitments from a portion of their existing loyal angel and pre-seed investors.
Their alpha product allows artists and influencers to facilitate paid and unpaid collaborations via powerful search and discovery, seamless payments, and escrow-based verification. Both parties gain more control and confidence, but particularly enables creatives to more fully focus on their music skills.
“When we designed Breakr, we focused on first addressing one of the biggest pain points for artists, influencers, and anyone trying to promote a song: outreach and execution for social placements,” said Ameer Brown, Breakr co-founder and CTO/Inventor.
Tobe Nwigwe, independent artist, HBCU FAMU alum, and Breakr co-founder, sums up the excitement surrounding the Breakr platform and how the music startup will change the direction of the careers of aspiring music artists.
“I immediately knew it would be the future. Having cultural icons like Erykah Badu and Dave Chapelle rock with my music and amplify me on their platforms was major for me. Now, with Breakr, we can make this happen for artists and influencers at every level.”
