Shantel
Unitea, the only engage-to-earn music platform built to deepen connections between artists, brands, and fans, today announced a seed round of $7M, led by 1st Class Guernsey, Chaos Capital, TokenSociety, and Fuel Venture Capital. Boasting a board of directors featuring industry titans like Pitbull (Armando Perez) and Claude VonStroke (Barclay Crenshaw), Unitea’s unique platform is innovating the way fans engage digitally within the music industry. By way of an in-app economy, Unitea encourages users to create content with music and branded filters from their favorite artists to earn rewards, creating actionable data for artists and brands and deepening their connections with fans. In the time since the pre-seed round started in 2020 Unitea has accomplished over 2,000 reward activations. Now that the round is closed, Unitea will leverage funds raised to further expand the capabilities of their platform within the music industry and beyond.
Though investments in this type of engage-to-earn technology continue to climb, realizing tangible value has continued to be a challenge across industries. Unitea has created engage to earn platforms in partnership with Procter & Gamble, while also activating through the Unitea App with 42 music festivals including Breakaway, Gem & Jam, and Dirtybird Campout, all while keeping centralized around the technology driving their engage-to-earn model. Unitea fans share music and create content to earn digital tokens called Karma that can be redeemed for exclusive rewards, from custom digital assets to concert tickets and artist meet and greets. The tangible value of rewards drives authentic engagement, which in turn delivers valuable data around fan interactions to artists and brands using the app. Ultimately, this creates a continuous cycle of authentic connections, rewards, and relationships that is poised to fundamentally change the way consumers interact with their favorite artists. By providing reward mechanisms both in the digital and physical space, collaboration with festivals provides a win-win scenario, giving users on the platform unique access to exclusive opportunities at events while also giving festival promoters and performing artists a new audience to reach out to.
“We’ve cracked the code on deriving meaningful benefits through engage-to-earn within the music space. Unitea gives digital assets real purpose across the engagement cycle, empowering artists and brands to cultivate and grow a passionate fan base organically,” said Ketan Rahangdale, CEO of Unitea. “With the support of our investors, Unitea is primed to make fan engagement more authentic, in a way that benefits everybody in the ecosystem. Whether it’s a musician, an artist, or a popular brand, Unitea makes it possible to gamify the engagement process and provide value across the board.”
Unitea’s unique technology has taken a foothold in the music industry and investors have noticed the incredible value that can be derived from organic engagement data. With 12 investors in total participating in the seed rounds, both from traditional venture capital firms and staples in the music industry, continual investment in the platform has been paralleled with validations as to its future potential.
“The unique combination of digital and real-world incentives for fans, along with a rewarding social network, has primed Unitea to take over the music industry. Today’s fans are looking for a different level of interaction from the brands they love, and this technology finally makes that possible,” said Simon Nicholls, Chairman of 1st Class Guernsey. “The level of engagement data collection that is possible with Unitea’s platform is incredibly enticing, and we’re excited to be a part of this movement as it grows.”
The music industry is about to undergo a revolution led by those who matter most, the fans and the artists, and Unitea is ready to lead the charge. In the future, Unitea looks forward to acting as a utility and community building platform for Web3 music collectives such as Dirtybird Flight Club, Dippies and Gay Aliens Society. To learn more, please visit: https://unitea.com/.
About Unitea
Unitea is an engage-to-earn platform that deepens connections between artists and their fans while giving brands access to invaluable advertising opportunities that enhance the end-user experience. The app incentivizes music fans to support their favorite artists in exchange for blockchain- authenticated rewards while providing a platform built for meaningful connection and artist innovation. Unitea believes that data and relationships belong to the people who build them, and developed the Karma Economy ecosystem to help creators regain control of their audience insights. Fans are incentivized to share their data as a way to earn Karma, while Unitea’s transparent data policy encourages ethical data use. Brands use that data in advertising, and artists can also access the data for invaluable insights into their fanbase.
