We recently wrote about Breakr — a platform that connects labels, artists and brands with social media influencers to run mass campaigns programmatically — when it closed a $4.2 million round in 2021. In the past two years, Breakr has onboarded more than 30,000 influencers and has managed more than $3.5 million in creator transactions. Now, to fuel its growth, Breakr has secured an additional $1.9 million at a $20 million valuation.
Slow Ventures led the expansion, which the company will use for recruiting and product development. Breakr has raised $8.7 million to date from an impressive list of investors that includes Marc Benioff, a16z/TxO, former Tik Tok CEO Kevin Mayer, RGA Ventures, Charles Hudson (Precursor Ventures), Complex founder Rich Antoniello, Lo Toney (Plexo Capital), Anthony Selah (WndrCo) and Quiet Capital.
Breakr’s user growth highlights the size of the creator economy, yet the modest size of this funding round, plus the total transaction value of the past two years, speaks to how nascent many of the business models in the space still are.
However, there is much hope. Goldman Sachs estimates that the Total addressable market for the creator economy could be worth up to $480 billion by 2027.
The players watching and active at Breakr also tell a story: Def Jam, Samsung, Billboard, Rolling Loud, Live Nation, Meta, Tidal, Epic, Kit Kat, P&G, Celsius, Mountain Dew and White Claw are among the labels. and brands using Breakr to connect music to brand campaigns. Meanwhile, musicians include Megan Thee Stallion, Future, Rick Ross, Gunna, JID, Sleepy Hallow, Ozzy Ozbourne, Black Pink, Young Thug, Kanye West, Brent Faiyaz, Tobe Nwigwe, PinkPantheress, Armani White, Charlieonnafriday and Nas (who is also an investor).
There are many platforms in the market today that connect creators, brands and content (such as music and other media) to create influencer campaigns. Breakr’s unique selling point is that it effectively treats this core idea as a programmatic opportunity, similar to how online advertising is created, sold and distributed today.
“Breakr wants to be Google Ad Words, powered by creators,” co-founder Anthony Brown told TechCrunch. “We believe that with the underlying audience data, massive liquidity and intelligence capabilities, it should be as easy to get into Breakr and spend $15,000 as it is to set it and forget it at Google.”
The company recently exited closed beta as a self-service SaaS platform, having started with a more hands-on approach. The SaaS platform is supported by a wallet that acts as an escrow account: money can be paid into one of the wallets for services that are committed and provided.
“This transition to a SaaS model aligns with our goal to streamline and democratize the influencer marketing process, making it more accessible and effective for a wider range of users in the music industry and beyond,” explained Brown.
Currently, Breakr is set up as a three-sided marketplace. On the creator side, people submit their profiles to the platform to be considered for campaigns.
On the music side, artists (or labels) submit music for a specific campaign. and if the music is selected, it is promoted to a new audience. Musicians may pay to have their music used, but they also take a cut of campaign revenue as a result.
On the marketing side, brands look to influencers to run offers and gain access to 40 data points (language, audio location, interest types and more) for each influencer. They can also look at the past content and engagement rates of those influencers and, more specifically, run some diagnostics to check brand safety and see if that influencer is dealing with fake followers (and if so, then decide how much important factor this is for them).
“The creator economy, especially in music, is rapidly evolving with a shift towards direct, curated and scalable relationships between digital marketers and creators. Traditional management tools are becoming obsolete, paving the way for more effective relationship-focused technologies. These include platforms that enable the easy distribution of personalized content and offers to creators, eliminating high-cost and short-lived campaigns. This trend toward continuous, evergreen marketing is proving effective, emphasizing the importance of ongoing engagement over one-off interactions,” said Brown.
While music marketing is its main bread and butter, Breakr eventually wants to tap into other areas such as film and television.
