Founded just four years ago in 2019 by Brazilian music producer Vítor Cunha and mechatronics engineer Fabrício Schiavo, Magroove’s rise has been rapid.
Beginning life as a dedicated music discovery app bridging the gap between independent acts and music fans, the Brazilian start-up soon realised that much of its artist userbase was in desperate need of better distribution. Today, Magroove provides that solution for more than 425,000 independent artists across 196 countries.
The company expanded to and started to gain real recognition in both the US and UK, with 70% of its users and listeners now being from the United States and Europe.
Most recently, Magroove managed to score fresh funding to the tune of $1.6m from Brazilian venture capital fund DOMO Invest. Cunha says that the money will go towards further expansion of both its team and technology to increase its impact both in Brazil and internationally.
Speaking to The IMI, Cunha, a former independent artist himself, points to the company’s decision to combine music discovery and distribution as key to establishing a compelling USP.
“We pivoted into music distribution, knowing that there was a huge chunk of artists left unattended by the market at that point,” he said. “Our distribution was crafted to be the service I needed as an indie artist back then but just didn’t exist.
“Combining the music discovery app with music distribution proved to be a great thing for us. Now we have a growing community of more than 850,000 users – a combination of artists and listeners. People that are truly enthusiastic about music.”
Indeed, it seems to be the connection that Magroove has made between artists and listeners (the latter of which now represents around half of that 850k userbase), bringing them together on the same platform, that piqued the interest of DOMO Invest.
As a partner at the firm, Rodrigo Borges, put it upon announcing Magroove’s new funding: “Despite all the technological advances made by the music market with streaming platforms, there is still a large contingent of musicians who do not know how to publish their music on these platforms. At the same time, we have an audience that is constantly looking for [new music]. Magroove makes this connection and our expertise in the B2C market will help them in their development and expansion.”
As well as expanding its team and territorial footprint, Cunha confirmed that Magroove will also look to add to its service offering in the coming years.
“Our mission is to keep helping artists get their music out there efficiently so they can focus on other aspects of their career,” he told The IMI. “We’ve walked in their shoes so we know how important that is. For our listeners, the goal is to keep striving for recommendations that are even more customized and accurate. We want to be the source they can rely on for discovering new music constantly.”
