It’s crazy to imagine that just two decades ago you would have had to rent videos just to check out the latest content. However, these days once you simply connect, it’s hard not to see the plethora of content creators taking over the online real estate, especially with the increasing popularity of platforms like YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook which have transformed the way we consume content. Israeli startup Artlist recognized the potential and aims to be the main tool for these content creators to find glory. As a first step towards that idea, the Israeli startup announces the completion of a $48 million funding round.

One subscription offers endless content

Artlist.io claims to have licensed over 20 million digital assets over the past half-decade, offering content creators music, sound effects, and stock videos which are all updated daily. Obtaining music and video licensing can often turn into a long-drawn-out process full of headaches for content creators that need to essentially get a license for each separate clip. Artlist.io offers its users a one-time subscription that enables its customers’ full use of the content library without any limits. The subscription pricing ranges from $150 for just sound effects and climbs up to $300 for the whole enchilada.

While speaking to Geektime CEO and co-founder, Ira Belsky revealed that the company is hard at work developing AI and ML-based tools that will be capable of defining each music segment or video clip and deconstruct them into absolute units: “Since music is very abstract, there was a need to research and develop a method to define music in a way that AI would be able to read it. Today, we are in the process of entering that data and constructing a personalized smart search engine.”

Raising $48M to expand the catalog

The $48 million announcement which was released today (Monday) was led by U.S. based KKR while existing investor Elephant Partners further contributed to the funding efforts. According to the company, it is estimated that by 2021 the average person will consume 100 minutes a day of content, therefore the incoming funds will go towards expanding the current content library and endeavoring into totally new categories as well so that any and every content creator will look no further than Artlist.io before their next upload. “We offer a wide variety of content, and with this latest investment we intend on expanding our content outreach to become a digital asset ‘one-stop-shop’ for all types of content creators,” claims Belsky.  

Artlist was founded in 2016 by co-CEO and moviemaker, Ira Belsky; co-CEO and former Mellanox user experience engineer Itzik Elbaz; Music Department Director and producer Eyal Raz; and Assaf Ayalon who is also a music producer. The has three Israel-based offices and employs almost 100 people.