digital music news posted a list they titled “Nearly $400 Million Has Been Invested In Music Startups This Year…” It’s a great list and I was pretty floored at some of the amounts. The thing that was missing for me from this list was info on the companies, what they were doing with the money, and who their investors are.

I took the list and injected some crunchbase into it to give a better idea.

I’m pretty tired after doing this, but here are a few quick observations (I’ll leave it up to you to add some more!). I’ll try to keep adding as 2011 rolls along.

  • These are not all “start-up companies.” Some have been around for many years.
  • Not all of these companies are music specific, namely the live event ticketing companies such as Ticketfly and Eventbrite
  • The majority of the companies are in San Francisco, New York, and Europe. As an Angeleno where a bazillion musicians are, I find this disturbing
  • There are a lot more players than I realized in the direct-to-fan space.
  • Common uses for the investment money are to hire, build out platforms and expand into new markets
  • There isn’t a lot of overlap in investors, but you can make some guesses on integration where there is
Here’s the link to see the full thing in Google Docs.