VNUE - VNUE Inc CEO Provides Update to Shareholders
NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / November 5, 2018 / VNUE, Inc. (OTCQB: VNUE) today announced that its Chairman and CEO released an update to shareholders as follows:
Dear Shareholders and VNUE followers:
So much has happened in relatively short time that I have been with the company, I thought it would be helpful to put it all into one update so you can see the incredible progress we have made.
In May of 2016, I stepped into the role of CEO of VNUE, and went to work addressing a multitude of challenges that we faced as a young company. As a going concern, the company was behind in its SEC filings, did not have what I would consider to be viable technology, had zero revenue, several prior legal issues, and very little resource. Additionally, there was a substantial amount of old debt on the books.
Through my initiatives over the last two years, the company is at an entirely different and much better place today.
The first year was almost entirely devoted to bringing the company back into compliance. I brought in new private investment through longstanding relationships, and through a laborious process, was able to move the company from being almost two years behind in its audits to completely current. By 2018, I had re-listed the company to the OTCQB, after it had slipped previously to my involvement to the Pink Sheets.
During this time period I brought on key team members, such as Tony "Montana" Cardenas, founder of DiskFaktory, one of the first on-demand CD burning services, and better known as the original bassist of platinum-selling band Great White. Together, we identified issues with the company's technology, and made the very difficult decision to go in a different direction. Simultaneously, we formed a strategic alliance with DiscLive (disclive.net), the company I had run in various forms for 15 years and widely known as the "pioneer in instant live recording."
By May of 2017, I leveraged this relationship to sign a deal with Scott Stapp, former lead singer of the multiplatinum band Creed, and jump-started the company's ability to generate revenue, with over five figures in just a few weeks, derived from just one very small tour.
Later that year, we struck an important deal with PledgeMusic, a leading crowdfunding and specialty merchandise company for music, to acquire their set.fm platform. This acquisition gave us the ability to do what VNUE had been meant to do from the beginning: to offer a scalable music platform where we can "instantly" provide concerts to fans via a mobile app and web interface.
Immediately after acquiring the set.fm platform, we signed our first major artist, Rob Thomas, lead singer of the band Matchbox Twenty, to record and sell three shows in January of 2018. Those shows were an overwhelming success, with 30% of the audience buying our recordings, generating over $20K in just three days, and providing over $10K to Rob's charity, Sidewalk Angels Foundation.
Also in late 2017 and early 2018, over the course of several months, I was able to convert about $1.5M worth of old debt into shares at an average of 11 cents a share, and simultaneously eliminated all pending litigation against the company and vacated some prior judgments, putting the company in a much better position to accept future investment.
In September of 2017, I added Lou Mann to our team, bringing a wealth of credibility and knowledge to the company. Lou is the former GM of Capitol Records, as well as former president of House of Blues Media properties, and has worked in the music business for over 40 years.
And, less than two months later, I brought on Jeff Zakim, a veteran executive of EMI Music Group, specializing in digital media.
Between the end of 2017 and now, the progress the company has made has been nothing short of miraculous, compared to where it was when I took the helm. Including Stapp and Thomas, we have signed no less than twelve artists to live recording deals, including our groundbreaking offering of the very last Vans Warped Tour show, which had over five hours of content and 30+ artists, captured from multiple stages.
Artists we signed for touring include Patty Smyth & Scandal, Marc Cohn, Ryan Cabrera, Ron Pope, King's X, Paul Rodgers, Fishbone and more, and altogether, the company has recorded over 100 shows just in 2018. This is up from zero in 2016, and just the 23 Scott Stapp shows in 2017. And we are already signed on to do more shows with Rob Thomas in 2019, and tours that have yet to be announced.
Importantly, we also made another important strategic acquisition. Earlier this year, we acquired the assets of Soundstr (soundstr.com). Soundstr is a platform that identifies music played in brick and mortar establishments, such as venues, radio stations, bars, restaurants, and more, and which will help to ensure the correct artists are paid. At the same time, we hope this technology will help create a fairer music licensing system for public performances. This is a multi-billion-dollar worldwide problem, and VNUE, with Soundstr, is in a very good position to tackle it.
Soundstr involves placing our patent-pending Pulseâ„¢ device in businesses, which then listens and identifies music and the various rights holders. Additionally, Soundstr has "beacon" advertising technology, which when enabled will allow business owners to benefit from revenue generated from targeted "location-based" advertising. Soundstr utilizes industry-leading GraceNote technology to help identify the music, as well as our own algorithms we are developing, and deep data provided by Music Reports, Inc., a deal which we signed earlier this year that was months in the works.
Another important development is that we started an advisory board with top industry credentials. The first advisory board members brought on were Bob and Nan Kingsley. Bob Kingsley is well known in country music radio, having dominated the airwaves for decades with both his "American Country Countdown," which ran for 27 years, and the more recent "Bob Kingsley's Country Top 40," which is syndicated on more than 300 radio stations nationally.
Additionally, we brought on music manager Nick Lippman, a partner in Lippman Entertainment along with his legendary father Michael Lippman. Lippman Entertainment has managed such artists as David Bowie and George Micheal, as well as current artists such as Matchbox Twenty and Ryan Cabrera. Nick brings to VNUE years of cutting-edge digital innovation as it pertains to music.
We believe that with proper execution and capitalization, Soundstr by itself, which is a subscription model, will render up to seven figures of revenue for the company in 2019, and up to $20M in revenue in 2020. Ultimately, our plan is for set.fm technology to be combined with Soundstr so that we may identify music on-the-fly for licensing and distribution, greatly streamlining the very murky and complicated world of performance licensing. We also expect the live music sales side of the business to increase as we continue to get our legs, which will contribute a considerable amount of revenue to the bottom line.
The coming months will no doubt have its own set of challenges. But with the massive amount of progress we have achieved in the last two years, with a very small team and minimal funding, I am confident that the company is on the path to unrivaled success. I believe that the hardest part is now behind us. The ship is set to sail, has left the harbor, and all the right ingredients are now in place: a world-class team with a proven track record, disruptive technologies, and a strategic plan that will allow us to grow to our full potential.
Thank you for your support over the last two years, and I look forward to many more.
All the best,
Zach Bair
CEO & Chairman
VNUE, Inc.
For more information about VNUE, please visit the below:
www.vnue.com - Corporate Information.
www.soundstr.com - Soundstr.
www.set.fm & www.disclive.net - for recorded consumer products.
Investor Relations
press@vnue.com
Safe Harbor Statement
This press release contains forward-looking statements. Actual results could differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of a number of risks and uncertainties. Statements made herein are as of the date of this press release and should not be relied upon as of any subsequent date.
SOURCE: VNUE, Inc.