Artlist secures $48m from investors led by KKR

By Emmanuel Legrand

Artlist has secured a $48 million financial round led by investment firm KKR, via its Next Generation Technology Growth Fund II, alongside existing Artlist investor, Elephant Partners. The company said it would use the funding to “expand into new adjacent categories both organically and via acquisitions."

  Israel-based Artlist was co-founded by filmmaker Ira Belsky, who is co-CEO of the company, with Itzik Elbaz and Eyal Raz. It provides a royalty-free music and sound effects licensing content platform to creators on YouTube and other UGC platforms. Users pay a subscription fee between $149 and $599 per year, depending on usage. Artlist also provides, via Artgrid, a large catalogue of stock footage. It claims to have licensed more than 20 million digital assets in the past four years.

  “What impresses us most about Artlist is the management team’s dedication to helping creators focus on what they do best and removing friction from the process of discovering and accessing content,” said Patrick Devine, a member of KKR’s Next Generation Technology Growth investment team.

  He added: “The growth of digital content creation – and the evolving way in which it is consumed – has generated a tremendous amount of opportunities for creators, but the process of licensing digital assets remains a significant challenge for small and large creators alike."