ILL SCHOOL Secures Follow-Up Investment from CNTTECH for J1BEATZ Platform
The Korean company ‘ILL SCHOOL‘, which operates the hip-hop beat trading platform ‘J1BEATZ‘, has secured follow-up investment from CNTTECH following its initial seed investment in 2021. The amount remains undisclosed.
As the hip-hop genre grows and gains significant market share, many related programs have emerged. Despite this, independent artists without a label find it challenging to obtain beats, complicating music production. Traditionally, composers have uploaded beats to YouTube or personal social media for individual transactions, leading to legal issues such as insecure trades.
To Address this, ILL SCHOOL launched the online beat trading platform J1BEATZ, an open-market style platform. It discovers talented producers, contracts directly with them, and manages the distribution of beats and music through its publishing business.
In 2020, J1BEATZ collaborated with rapper ‘Basick’ to purchase a beat from one of its composers, producing a track that reached the top of real-time search rankings and garnered three million views on YouTube.
Following its 2021 seed investment in ILL SCHOOL, CNTTECH supported the enhancement of ILL SCHOOL’s business model and investment capabilities through the 2023 Young Entrepreneurs Academy (Gyeonggi Northern Center, operated by CNTTECH), sponsored by ‘Korea SMEs and Startups Agency’.
Jeon Hwasung, CEO of CNTTECH, stated, “After the seed investment in 2021, ILL SCHOOL diversified its business, resulting in a five-fold increase in cumulative streaming and a four-fold increase in transactions. In 2023, revenues increased by more than 280% compared to the previous year. ILL SCHOOL has grown into the platform with the most artists and beat tracks in Korea and is poised to become a global beat platform capable of meeting the demand for K-pop-related music content.”
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