Snafu Records, an AI-driven record label out of Los Angeles, announced Thursday it raised $2.9 million in seed funding and officially launched its platform.
The company’s founder and CEO Ankit Desai told TechCrunch the idea of Snafu is to “essentially turn everyone listening to music into a talent scout on our behalf.”
The algorithm reportedly analyzes about 15,000 unsigned tracks from open platforms like Spotify, SoundCloud, YouTube and TikTok and evaluates them based on things like listener engagement on social media and the quality of the music itself. The songs are then given a score, narrowing down the selection enough that the humans working at Snafu can parse through them quickly.
If the company decides to sign an artist, the musician gets access to the company’s industry experience (for example, head of creative Carl Falk, who has written songs for high-profile artists like Madonna and Nicki Minaj) and marketing support in exchange for a percentage of streaming revenue. Desai also told TechCrunch that Snafu shares more revenue with artists and signs them for shorter periods of time than a traditional record label contract.
This latest round boasts several prominent investors from the music industry, including ABBA member Agnetha Fältskog, Spotify advisor John Bonten, Soundboks founder Jesper Theil Thomsen and Headstart.io founder Nicholas Shekerdemian.
Snafu says it has already signed 16 musicians since its soft launch in March, including the Indie pop duo Joan and MishCatt, a Costa Rican jazz musician.
“We started Snafu Records because we wanted to build a bridge for the thousands of artists out there whose music the world is dying to hear, but don’t get a chance,” Desai said in a statement. “Since launch, we’ve already utilized our technology to identify, sign, and help artists from Arkansas to India, from Stockholm to Singapore, all while being based in Stockholm and Los Angeles.”
