Stockholm AI startup Tonada has raised $3M in pre-seed funding to replace licensed background music in physical retail and hospitality with AI-generated, royalty-free sound.
Antler led the funding round, with participation from Spintop Ventures, RTP Global, Triple A VC, Karaoke Club, and angel investors like Vercel founder Guillermo Rauch.
A study of 1.8 million retail transactions found that playing the wrong music actually hurt sales more than having no music.
Juan Manuel Serruya worked for years as an engineering lead at Spotify and saw a problem the company couldn’t fix. Many cafés, hotels, and stores played Spotify using personal accounts, which aren’t licensed for commercial use.
Spotify gets music from labels and publishers for personal use, but playing that music in a business requires a different, more expensive license. Even Spotify’s business product, Soundtrack Your Brand, uses licensed music with the same costs.
