Nothing ruins a wedding like a loud, obnoxious, wish-I-was-a-radio-talk-show-host-but-didn’t-make-the-cut DJ. Maybe food poisoning. But a bad DJ is still quite capable of totally bringing down your wedding reception on his own, without any help from food poisoning. So to help you get a DJ who won’t drag down your party, there’s the Scratch Music Group, the number one online resource for all your DJ needs. And the company announced Tuesday that it has raised $3.3 million in a round of funding led by Contour Venture Partners, with help from the New York City Investment Fund (NYCIF), and angel investors Jason Finger and Todd Arky, of SeamlessWeb, and Jacob Pechenik, co-founder and CEO of YellowJacket Software.
Additionally, the company announced the launched of its new service, Scratch Weddings, to bring its services to the wedding market.
Founded in 2002, the company boasts a lineup of over 700 screened, trained, and tested marquee DJs across the country. To date, Scratch has provided DJs for more than 15,000 events and over 50 national tours for brands ranging from MTV, Pepsi, and H&M to Saks, Bloomingdale’s, and Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines.
The company plans to use the new capital from this round of funding to fuel the growth of Scratch Weddings, Scratch’s first foray into the wedding industry. Personally, I firmly believe that DJs only muck up weddings. In fact, I don’t even like live bands at weddings, since they inevitably get to talking and next thing you know, you’re listening to boring microphone banter between the lead singer and the lead guitarist about how great the weather is today and bladda bladda (these same live bands also seem to appear frequently at farmer’s markets, where they manage to ruin my shopping experience as well).
So can Scratch be trusted with your wedding reception? The company makes some big promises: highly skilled DJs, personalized music tailored to your tastes (no “YMCA” or “I Like Big Butts,” unless you’re into that), and a 72-hour money-back guarantee. And it looks like the company is putting its money where its mouth is. Since Scratch entered the wedding market this year, it has already been awarded The Knot’s “Best of Weddings” award, WeddingWire’s “Bride’s Choice” award, and “Best of New York Weddings” from New York Magazine.
“Scratch Music Group has a world-class management team combined with a powerful brand with a deep rooted musical heritage,” said Matt Gorin of Contour Venture Partners. “We are excited by the opportunity to work with the company to scale across the large and highly fragmented wedding music market via Scratch’s high quality technology-enabled service.”
