Shawn Wilson is CEO of Muzooka.
Shawn Wilson
What is Muzooka?
Wilson: Muzooka is where musical artists and their teams manage their media assets across multiple platforms from one central hub. Update your photos, bio, social media and video links on Muzooka, and we distribute those to our many industry partners, who always need access to the most current artist assets.
Muzooka also automates live setlist reporting to performing rights organizations worldwide, ensuring songwriters and rights holders are properly paid when their songs are played onstage.
How, when and why was it started?
Wilson: Muzooka was quite different when it started back in 2013. The platform was originally built to be a vetting model for concert promoters in Nashville who wanted a better way to discover the best new talent. Part of that vetting model was a comprehensive artist page that made it easy to learn about an artist very quickly.
Someone who worked with Lollapalooza used the system and asked us if they could use those artist pages to power the lineups on their website. That was the real “Aha!” moment for us and also when we pivoted to the current version of Muzooka.
Can you give me a sense of what your audience is like and the reach you have?
Wilson: Interestingly, many of the folks who see and interact with Muzooka data have no idea that it’s coming from us. We distribute artist assets, in a completely white-label fashion, to radio charts, festival websites, ticketing platforms, metadata providers, streaming services, and many more places that need them.
With over 1.5 million artists from all over the world in the Muzooka ecosystem, and many connected industry partners, our reach is very wide and growing rapidly.
What’s new with the company in the past year?
Wilson: The past year has been a great one for Muzooka. We’ve established partnerships with some of the biggest names in the industry, with more big announcements on the way very soon. This was also the year our artist count crossed one million, which was an exciting benchmark for us, even as that number continues to grow.
What are you future growth plans for the company?
Wilson: Muzooka is fast becoming the ubiquitous place for the music industry to find and manage artist assets. Our list of partners is growing quickly and that’s because we offer the kind of service that, to our knowledge, nobody else in the world does.
I’m really proud to be building a global network to ensure that the songwriters we all love are getting their due when their songs are played live. I mean, what could be better than that?
– Mario Toneguzzi
The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.
