Atlanta entrepreneur Seth Radman has hit another high note in the MusicTech space.
A little over two years after his startup Crescendo was acquired by Ultimate Guitar, one of his latest ventures, Upbeat Music App, has also been acquired.
Upbeat was officially acquired by Colorado-based MakeMusic, one of the original players in the music technology and education space. It appears to be a pitch-perfect match of sorts. Upbeat is a collaboration tool for musicians looking to create virtual performance videos, and MakeMusic has interactive music learning software that transforms the way students practice.
Radman co-founded Upbeat with software engineer and flutist Sudarshan Muralidhar at the very start of the pandemic as a way to help musicians collaborate in the virtual world. “We’ve been SmartMusic users since we were in middle school, and even then were intrigued by the many possibilities of music technology in the classroom. Though we’ve both come a long way since childhood, it’s incredibly exciting to return to our roots and revisit SmartMusic,” Muralidhar wrote in a statement about the acquisition.
The acquisition will help MakeMusic bring key video recording features to users. The technology will be integrated into its platform SmartMusic at the start of next year, allowing teachers to enable video recording of assignments and giving students the ability to self-analyze assessments.
While the details about the acquisition were not immediately disclosed, Radman wrote that he plans to donate a “ large portion” of his earnings to nonprofits helping young musicians.
“Upbeat was booming when schools were forced to go remote during the height of the pandemic. When schools started returning in person and our usage decreased, we realized that Upbeat had a better future as a feature in a larger product instead of as a standalone product itself,” Radman told Hypepotamus.
It is also a unique moment for the overall Atlanta MusicTech scene, as the Upbeat technology will help more students across the country get the support they need in learning an instrument and creating better musical experiences overall.
“We saw musicians and educators struggling to adapt. The latency in video chat makes it nearly impossible to have music rehearsals virtually,” Radman wrote. From March 2020 to now, Upbeat reached 200,000 users and was used in 5,000 schools.
The entire venture was bootstrapped to date.
Radman told Hypepotamus that he and Muralidhar will spent part of this summer in Paris at MakeMusic’s HQ to get Upbeat’s technology integrated with the platform. Radman will stay on in an advisory capacity after that.
Radman, who just graduated from Georgia Tech in 2017 with a degree in mechanical engineering, has been part of founding or co-founding four startups already. His latest venture, Infinite Giving, is a FinTech startup helping nonprofits.
