Concert Online raises €3.3 million

Internet service for concert and festival recordings proving worthy venture

Concert Online, an Internet service catering to concert fans, has raised €3.3 million in its latest VC round of funding led by EarlyBird Venture Capital. Following a successful round of financing completed last January, which boosted the online venue’s support with an undisclosed amount of euros, the latest round announced today signals healthy growth for the expanding company.

Current shareholders DuMont Venture and Klaus Wecken contributed €1.3 million while EarlyBird Venture Capital led the funding with a €2 million investment. EarlyBird has a twelve-year history of investments in online services and medical technology. At the moment, the technology investor administers 400 million euros of assets for 20 companies in seven countries.

Commenting on the continuing growth of Concert Online, EarlyBird Partner Dr. Hendrik Brandis stated, “Live shows are again the key source of value creation for music artists. Music Networx offers distribution of and access to a very broad range of high quality live music and is therefore ideally positioned to benefit from this trend.”

Based in Cologne, Germany under the umbrella company, Music Networx GmbH, Concert Online seeks to broaden the horizons of the traditional concert experience by supplementing it with music and video downloads.

At its core, the online service wants to make up for the gap in concert recordings—a space usually filled by unofficial bootleggers—by consolidating recordings from a variety of artists all on one website. Promising official high-quality full-length recordings in both audio and video formats, Concert Online already strives for above and beyond your average concert bootleg.

The service goes further, though, providing concertgoers with an effective online community that will not only alert fans of upcoming shows and the latest uploaded recordings, but also boasts of more localized perks like carpool arrangements.

CEO and co-founder of Music Networx Gerrit Schumann, well-known for co-founding e-commerce outsourcing company element 5 (now owned by Digital River), reveals a possibly successful future for Concert Online in its current growth: “We have significantly increased our degree of popularity with bands, labels and concert goers over the recent months. International top-acts such as Simply Red, Franz Ferdinand and music festivals such as Rock im Park and Rock am Ring have already successfully partnered with us.”

With a steady stream of investments and more big-name acts like these, Concert Online may have greater success to look forward to.