Elton John backs music royalty device company Audoo

London-headquartered music tech company Audoo has secured a $5m (£4.1m) investment from superstar musician Elton John and filmmaker David Furnish.

Audoo has developed devices that are installed in public locations and listen to what music tracks are played to provide royalty compensation to artists.

Once it has identified songs, Audoo refers the data to “partnered collection societies” so that owners of the tracks can then be compensated appropriately.

Elton John said: “Working as a musician can be seen as all glitz and glamour but for the vast majority of artists, especially new and emerging acts, this isn’t the case.

“It’s often brutally unfair and this sadly extends into being paid correctly. Right now, artists are not being paid accurately for their plays because the data simply doesn’t exist.”

It is not the first time Audoo has secured funding from leading artists. Bjorn Ulvaeus from ABBA has previously invested in Audoo.

Audoo was founded by CEO Ryan Edwards in 2018 after discovering that he had not been compensated for a song that he’d written that was broadcast in a popular department store. The company’s devices are now positioned around the world in over ten countries.

“Being able to draw on the support of artists in our mission to revolutionise the royalty space has been key to Audoo’s success, and we are incredibly proud to welcome even more icons to aid in the next stage of our journey,” says Edwards.

Audoo raised £1.5m seed funding in 2020.