Swiss fintech firm Utopia has determined to promote its music trade listing and information platform, ROSTR, again to its founders Mark Williamson and Adam Watson.

The choice, introduced Tuesday (February 7), comes lower than three months after the corporate confirmed to MBW that it has made a lot of layoffs.

“Like many progress firms in in the present day’s macroeconomic surroundings, Utopia is making adjustments to its inner construction to optimize the enterprise,” Utopia stated on the time.

The information additionally arrives simply over every week after it was introduced that Utopia CEO Markku Mäkeläinen, could be leaving the enterprise.

Utopia’s sale of ROSTR kinds a part of a wider strategic reorganization.

“Our Utopian imaginative and prescient is that the music trade can totally monetize using music in all its kinds and proceed to develop consequently. We’re working onerous to make this a actuality, by focusing our efforts on constructing the monetary infrastructure and B2B companies for the music trade.”

Mattias Hjelmstedt, Utopia

The corporate has determined to arrange two divisions: Music Companies and Royalty Platform because it refocuses on monetary companies for the music trade, the corporate says.

Utopia acquired US-based ROSTR and Austria-based music information analytics platform, ForTunes, in December 2021, paving the way in which for the institution of Utopia’s Creator Companies unit in 2022.

ROSTR claims to map “the biggest database of artist groups together with tons of of 1000’s of relationships between artists, managers, brokers, labels and publishers.”

With the sale of ROSTR, Utopia says it would now deal with serving creators by third events through its B2B choices. The corporate didn’t disclose whether or not it would additionally divest ForTunes.

“Utopia and ROSTR got here along with a shared mission of constructing a greater world for music, though we’ll be pursuing this mission on separate paths, we all know ROSTR is a useful useful resource for the music trade and we want Mark, Adam, and the entire ROSTR group one of the best of luck,” Utopia Government Chairman Mattias Hjelmstedt stated.

“After we got the chance to re-acquire ROSTR, we needed to take it; we’ve unfinished enterprise serving to to construct a extra related leisure trade.”

Mark WIlliamson, ROSTR

Commenting on the deal, ROSTR CEO and co-founder Mark WIlliamson stated: “After we got the chance to re-acquire ROSTR, we needed to take it; we’ve unfinished enterprise serving to to construct a extra related leisure trade. We’d prefer to thank Utopia for the final yr and want all of them the success going ahead.”

The sale will enable Utopia to sharpen its deal with constructing and scaling a monetary infrastructure and merchandise for the music trade that might enable trade gamers to course of royalties precisely.

“Our Utopian imaginative and prescient is that the music trade can totally monetize using music in all its kinds and proceed to develop consequently. We’re working onerous to make this a actuality, by focusing our efforts on constructing the monetary infrastructure and B2B companies for the music trade to course of and pay out royalties rapidly and precisely,” Hjelmstedt added.

Again in November 2022, an organization spokesperson instructed MBW that Utopia has grown quickly in two years, organically and thru 15 acquisitions. The corporate is now working to appreciate price synergies throughout its acquisitions and deal with sustainable progress.

Over the latest years, Utopia made a string of acquisitions together with of bodily music distributor Cinram, UK-based Absolute Label Companies, Liverpool-based music writer and publishing administration firm Sentric Music Group, and UK-based distributor Correct Music Group, amongst many others.

Music Enterprise Worldwide