TastemakerX Raises Series A Funding

TastemakerX, a social mobile platform focused on developing a targeted taste graph, announced that it has raised $1.8 million in funding from venture capital firms and angel investors that include media and music veterans.

In a release dated Feb. 8, the Company said it will release its debut TastemakerX Music mobile app as a private beta in early March 2012.
Investors in this round of financing include Guggenheim Partners, Baseline Ventures, True Ventures, AOL Ventures and Tekton Ventures. Additionally, the company has attracted Internet and music industry advisors John Battelle, Marc Geiger, Ian Rogers, Paul Bricault and Ted Rheingold and angel investors Andrew Anker, Mich Mathews, Michael Kassan and Mike McGinley.

The company founders, Marc Ruxin, a former advertising and media executive and start-up advisor and Sandro Pugliese, an engineer and entrepreneur, both started their careers in the A&R department at EMI records in the early 1990s. Ruxin and Pugliese are using the funds to launch the company and develop the TastemakerX platform.

"What music fan doesn't want to be the first to discover the next big band and get credit for it?" said Ruxin, CEO of TastemakerX. "Like fantasy sports for music lovers, players will be able to browse portfolios of like-minded music aficionados to discover new music and see real-time news about the artists they love."

Steve Anderson, founder of Baseline Ventures, said, "Over the past few years, the big social networks were growing so quickly and becoming so broad that surfacing information about personal taste was becoming almost impossible. TastemakerX solves two problems: It delineates personal taste and influence, establishing a true 'taste graph,' and it gamifies culture, in the same way Fantasy sports leagues gamifiy professional sports for millions of fans."

TastemakerX is social gaming platform that allows users to build portfolios of personal tastes and share it to their social graph.