FLYMACHINE Raises $21 Million to Create the Digital Future of Live Events

Flymachine, the new virtual venue for live entertainment which delivers a first-of-its-kind immersive social experience, today announced $21 million in new funding. The financing was led by Greycroft Partners and SignalFire, with additional participation from Primary Venture Partners, Contour Venture Partners, Red Sea Ventures, and Silicon Valley Bank. Angel investors joining the round include music-industry luminaries Coran Capshaw, Bill Silva, Marty Diamond, and Larry Webman, Bay Area concert promoter Another Planet Entertainment, Ben Lovett of Mumford & Sons, WIRED magazine co-founding editor John Battelle, and LionTree Partners. With this new investment, Flymachine will continue to grow its diverse team, expand its network of iconic venue partners, and develop new features for its industry-leading digital events platform.

Live events are becoming just as digitally interconnected as other aspects of our lives, and virtual audiences are becoming an extension of in-person audiences. With Flymachine, fans get a front-row, completely-immersive seat to some of the world's most recognized venues and the freedom to choose their own live entertainment experience from wherever they are. Fans have a real sense of place on Flymachine with unprecedented levels of agency and social connectivity, as opposed to passively watching a broadcast. Participants can virtually move through various spaces, utilize proximity-based video chat to see and speak to each other, and experience chance encounters during an event, similar to an in-venue experience - all powered by cutting-edge, patent-pending video technology.

"Virtual events have an opportunity to change the game for artists, promoters, and fans, but the technology that exists today is pretty underwhelming - videobox, paywall, and a bunch of scrolling nonsense; not exactly what one would call game-changing," said Andrew Dreskin, CEO and Co-Founder of Flymachine." At Flymachine, we're creating something different: a digital venue of the future, an art medium, and a social meeting place. It offers a level of depth, agency and social interactivity that hadn't before existed. It's a pretty cool way to check out a show remotely."

With Flymachine, artists are provided with a new level of creative control over their digital performances that livestreaming platforms do not offer. Artists can utilize popular tools and third-party integrations that professional touring personnel use everyday. A continued area of focus will be providing live performers and production teams with access to advanced broadcast features, pre-and-post show multimedia offerings, real-time data, and crowd visualizations.

"Flymachine is live digital events on a completely different level. The social element is unparalleled, and the artist and fan engagement we've seen so far has been amazing. We've already heard great feedback from artists and their teams about the potential to connect more with their fans and bring immersive, new experiences to concerts," said Marty Diamond, Managing Executive at Wasserman Music.

"The Flymachine team's deep track record of architecting many of the world's best live entertainment experiences including Bonnaroo and Outside Lands, to name a few, aligns perfectly with the massive opportunity to unlock the future of social streaming for live events," said Wayne Hu, Managing Director at SignalFire. "In just a short amount of time, the team has built strategic partnerships with many of the most well-known venues in North America, developed the most innovative platform in the market, and created a next-generation experience for fans and artists. This was an investment we absolutely had to make."

Flymachine is the brainchild of music industry veterans and digital gamechangers, including Co-founder and CEO Andrew Dreskin, the tech visionary who co-founded Ticketfly and TicketWeb, the first company to sell event tickets online; Co-founder and Chief Experience Officer Rick Farman, a culture sculptor at Superfly who co-founded Bonnaroo and Outside Lands; and Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Matthew Davis, the Grammy-nominated music technology trailblazer and founder of [namethemachine]. ATC Management, a fourth founding partner, has been an innovator in the artist management space for over two decades, representing a roster of over 500 artists who garnered 19 Grammy nominations in 2021 alone, including Nick Cave, PJ Harvey, The Lumineers, Cuco, Santigold, and Johnny Marr. The founding team has worked at the crossroads of technology and entertainment for over two decades.

Since the public launch of the Flymachine platform in spring 2021, the company has already hosted a diverse roster of live music performances making virtual events immersive and communal for the first time. Upcoming shows include Aaron Frazer, K.Flay, The Black Angels, and Lion Babe. Flymachine has also been gearing up for the return of live touring by establishing a network of iconic venues to deliver hybrid IRL-virtual events to fans around the world. Exclusive agreements are already in place with Bowery Ballroom in New York City, Bimbo's 365 Club in San Francisco, The Casbah in San Diego, The Crocodile in Seattle, Marathon Music Works in Nashville, Vogue Theatre in Vancouver, and Teragram Ballroom in Los Angeles, among numerous others.

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