Photo Credit: Heshan Perera
Music-technology company VNUE is officially set to acquire Hollywood-based monetized-livestream platform StageIt.
VNUE (OTC: VNUE) higher-ups announced the StageIt acquisition today, via a formal release that was shared with Digital Music News. New York City-headquartered VNUE, which is “dedicated to further monetizing the live music experience for artists, labels,” and others, expects the deal to close within the next 60 days, “pending the completion of diligence and the required financial audit.”
The purchase price hasn’t been publicly disclosed, but provided that the buyout wraps, “StageIt will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of VNUE,” the release makes clear. Founded by musician Evan Lowenstein 11 years back, StageIt enables artists to host up to half-hour long livestreams (with the option of a 20-minute encore) “directly from a laptop.”
Said livestream performances “are never archived,” the company relays on its website – though that could soon change, for the release specifies that VNUE, through its set.fm division, “will add a feature that not only allows fans to enjoy a livestream but purchase the audio of the performance immediately afterwards.”
The more than decade-old StageIt in locked-down 2020 hosted 6,280 shows and, in June of the same year, brought on former Dubset head Stephen White as CEO. Artists including Joan Jett, The Plain White T’s, Korn, Trey Songz, and Jon Bon Jovi have utilized the platform, and 2020’s 6,280 shows generated north of $9.2 million, according to the release, for an average of almost $1,500 per gig.
StageIt paid out over $7 million to artists last year, the announcement message also discloses, or approximately 76 percent of total revenue and an average of about $1,114 per show. Needless to say, however, outliers within the dataset – especially high-earning performances from particularly well-known acts, that is– could have skewed the mean.
Addressing the StageIt purchase in a statement, VNUE CEO Zach Bair said: “The acquisition of StageIt represents the first step in a multi-pronged plan to grow the business and enhance shareholder value, as I have committed to since day one.
“The company will pursue both organic and inorganic opportunities that are synergistic, and with StageIt, we have incredible synergy not just with the StageIt platform and how we can integrate with our existing content platforms such as set.fm, but with the incredible leadership and talent pool that we will now have access to in order to move our Soundstr technology forward,” finished Bair, whose company’s stock price hiked by nearly 28 percent today, to just above one cent per share.
Regarding VNUE’s “existing content platforms,” the company says on its website that it’s “the exclusive licensor” of concert-focused physical-media business DiscLive, besides mentioning its “exclusive” concert-audio sales platform set.fm and Soundstr, a system for identifying and reporting song plays in public establishments.
About one week ago, remote livestream-production company LiveControl raised $30 million in a Series A funding round, and Deezer in May backed livestream-concert startup Dreamstage.