Jingle Punks Music Completes Substantial Equity Financing and Establishes Strategic Advisory Board

NEW YORK, May 24 /PRNewswire/ -- Jingle Punks Music LLC, a built-for-purpose music publishing and technology company founded in August, 2008 by Jared Gutstadt and Dan Demole, announced today that it has completed a substantial equity financing.  The financing was sponsored by Hammerline Capital, a New York based private equity investment company, and includes veterans from the music and technology industries. Proceeds from the transaction will help fund new product development, strategic content partnerships, and continued international expansion. Specific terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20100524/NY09799 )

Jingle Punks is the fastest growing resource for indie, production, and high-quality custom music in the United States and is currently providing music for use in television, film, advertising, and interactive to clients across the media and entertainment industries. The company's unique library search technology, in-house production capabilities, and growing network of composers are changing the way content creators discover and license music.

"Our last year of business was all about becoming a profitable and stable company," said Jared Gutstadt, CEO of Jingle Punks. "With this new financing, we are in a place to do the heavy lifting for some long-term strategic partnerships we are currently exploring with some huge and game-changing brands.  We plan to announce several of these deals within the next twelve months."

The Company also announced that it has established a strategic advisory board that includes Steve Kofsky of New Remote Publishing and Spencer Hyman, strategy consultant and former COO of Last.FM.  Mr. Hyman, who is also an investor in Jingle Punks, said, "I got the same goose bumps about this company as I did when I first encountered Last.FM.  To me, the Jingle Punks approach represents the future of music discovery and music licensing."  

Since 2008, co-founders Jared Gutstadt (a.k.a. "Jingle Jared") and Dan Demole (CTO) have shared a vision for a different kind of music licensing company, one that leveraged unique technology to address the needs of music supervisors and fostered a culture focused on creating opportunities for unsung composers and independent musicians. The Jingle Player, the company's intuitive search technology, relies on a two-pronged approach to categorizing music: proprietary software and human tagging. Each song is meticulously analyzed and tagged based not only on its sound and musical makeup, but also on how it fits into media content for end use. The Player's relational database allows content creators across all forms of media to search for their production music needs using musical and non-musical terms, in the same way that people think and talk about music.

In a recent article, CNN said, "The company's proprietary search engine, the Jingle Player, allows users to enter the vaguest sonic parameters -- 'sounds like I'm in Starbucks' -- and get results from a database containing the works of roughly 300 professional musicians." This smart technology, a selectively curated library of fresh indie content and real-time, cost-effective custom music services, defines the Jingle Punks model, one that is becoming the end-to-end music licensing solution for the media industry's elite.

According to MTV producer Ron Cohen, with Jingle Punks "we no longer must choose from middling to mediocre music or recycle tracks heard everywhere." Cohen uses a substantial selection from Jingle Punks on every show and relies on its proprietary search engine to help him find music that stands out. "It seems ubiquitous. Each show I walk into now references Jingle Punks," he explains.

Since its inception, Jingle Punks has garnered frequent media coverage, including CNN, Billboard, Brazil's PEGN and Variety, and was named "one of America's most promising start ups" by Business Week. At the 2010 South by Southwest (SXSW) Music, Film & Interactive Festival, Pepsi and SoundCtrl acknowledged Jingle Punks as a leading innovator in the music technology industry. Jingle Punks has created a unique brand, which is highlighted by Jingle Jared's numerous industry conference appearances and Apple Store seminars, where he leads discussions about how technology can help turn anyone with musical ambition into a member of the Jingle Punks Army. The company's distinct approach to marketing is represented by The Jingle Guy, who is becoming a frequent guest at music and cultural events, where he is seen promoting the Jingle Punks brand and whose sole purpose in life is to rid the world of bad production music.

SOURCE Jingle Punks Music LLC