Blockchain Platform Utopia Music Acquires ISPY Group to Open Untapped Revenue

Utopia Music, a blockchain-powered music data tracking platform, has acquired ISPY Group to open up avenues of untapped revenue in the music industry.

It’s estimated that there is around $30-60 billion worth of untapped revenue in the music industry. Not only that, but royalities collected by performing rights agencies remain unallocated, unattributed, and unpaid to rights holders as a result of missing ownership of information.

Utopia Music, which runs its head office out of the Crypto Valley in Zug, Switzerland, is aiming to change this by leveraging the blockchain. With the acquisition of ISPY Group, a Stockholm-based digital agency, the music platform is working toward its goal of creating a more transparent and efficient music system.

Founded in 2016, the music platform is hoping to achieve this with its smart contract-powered, blockchain-based architecture that will automatically administer and distribute royalty payouts. The acquisition, which began in mid-June 2018, is expected to be completely integrated into Utopia Music by the end of the year.

Speaking of the acquisition, Mattias Hjelmstedt, CEO and founder of Utopia Music, explained that the ecosystem they are creating will benefit all stakeholders in the music industry “by removing existing inefficiencies and unlocking untracked revenues.”

“Our technology will fuel streamlined rights management, allowing for flexible and customisable payments, as well as providing insightful user data to help artists and business people make more informed decisions,” he added. “Our strategic acquisition of the ISPY Group will help us build a powerful data communications protocol upon which any third-party can build new products and services, fuelling value creation in the wider music ecosystem.”

The acquisition of ISPY Group will enable Utopia Music to continue expanding its platform and its business operations. As well as opening up untapped revenue in the music industry, Utopia Music will also offer refined user data to help shape better business decisions to connect artists to fans in the digital era.

“ISPY Group has always had a bold vision to help our clients change the way they leverage technology, and we are proud to be contributing to the end-to-end digitisation of the music value chain and the revitalisation of the status quo with our deep expertise and knowledge,” said Peter Karlsson, CEO and Strategic Business Developer at ISPY Group.