TastemakerX, the social mobile platform that turns music discovery into a game, has raised $1.8 million in funding from leading venture capital firms and angel investors that include media, music and marketing veterans. The app will become available in private beta early in March.
Investors in this round of financing include Guggenheim Partners, Baseline Ventures, True Ventures, AOL Ventures and Jai Choi’s seed investment fund Tekton Ventures, along with angels Andrew Anker, Mich Mathews, Michael Kassan and Mike McGinley.
TastemakerX also has some well-known names as advisors, such as John Battelle, Marc Geiger, Ian Rogers, Paul Bricault and Ted Rheingold.
The social gaming platform allows users to build portfolios music that suits their personal taste and share it to their social graph, leading to various avenues for discovering artists, trends and inspiration. Users also can compete against other tastemakers, as well as share experiences through geo-tagging, commentary and photo sharing.
“What music fan doesn’t want to be the first to discover the next big band and get credit for it?” said Marc Ruxin, co-founder and CEO of TastemakerX. “Like fantasy sports for music lovers, players will be able to browse portfolios of like-minded music aficionados to discover new music and see real-time news about the artists they love.”
Steve Anderson, founder of Baseline Ventures, said, “Over the past few years, the big social networks were growing so quickly and becoming so broad that surfacing information about personal taste was becoming almost impossible. TastemakerX solves two problems: it delineates personal taste and influence, establishing a true ‘taste graph,’ and it gamifies culture, in the same way fantasy sports leagues gamifiy professional sports for millions of fans.”
Related links:
Press release – http://tinyurl.com/6v2qy28
http://www.guggenheimpartners.com
http://corp.aol.com/products-services/aol-ventures
