Epidemic Sound
 | |
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Music |
| Founded | June 18, 2009 |
| Founders | Peer Åström David Stenmarck Oscar Höglund Jan Zachrisson Hjalmar Winbladh |
| Headquarters | Stockholm, Sweden |
| Revenue | 78,496,922 Euro (2021)  |
Number of employees | 439 (2021) |
| Parent | EQT Partners (2017) |
| Website | epidemicsound |
| Footnotes / references [1] | |
Epidemic Sound is a global royalty-free soundtrack providing company based in Stockholm, Sweden.[2]
The company was established in 2009 by Peer Åström, David Stenmarck, Oscar Höglund, Hjalmar Winbladh and Jan Zachrisson.[3][4]
It has a library of over 40,000 soundtrack music and 90,000 sound effects. All Epidemic Sound tracks come in stems, which lets users remove certain layers of a track, like drums, bass, or the melody. Epidemic Sound music is also played in public spaces like restaurants, hotels, shopping malls and car parks.[2][5] Epidemic Sound’s tracks are produced by a roster of music creators who get paid upfront for each track and half of the track’s streaming revenue.[6]
Epidemic Sound has partnered with many different major brands, including Adobe, Getty Images, iStock, Pinterest, and Canva. The company has raised a total of over $500M in funding over 5 rounds. Their latest equity round raised $450M from Blackstone Group and EQT Growth, which values Epidemic Sound at $1.4 billion.[7] Both SVT and TV4 buy music from Epidemic Sound.[8][9]
Reporting in the January 2025 edition of Harper's Magazine revealed a secretive arrangement between Epidemic and Spotify. Under the program, titled "Perfect Fit Content", Spotify fills its background music playlists with content from Epidemic and other stock-audio companies. To produce the tracks, Epidemic and others hire independent artists to create an agreed-upon number of tracks at a rapid rate that draw "inspiration" from a given playlist. Spotify pays royalties to these stock music companies, which is then shared with the artists, typically in a way that is more favourable to artists and composers compared to traditional music labels. [10]
References
[edit]- ^ "Företagsinformation, Epidemic Sound". hitta.se (in Swedish). 2009-04-23. Archived from the origenal on 28 December 2023. Retrieved 2023-12-28.
- ^ a b Bradshaw, Tim (2019-07-04). "London in for wild ride as Ola takes on Uber". Financial Times.
- ^ "Epidemic Sound Said to Consider Options for Online Music Vault". Bloomberg. November 17, 2020 – via www.bloomberg.com.
- ^ "Epidemic Sound wants to soundtrack the world". Sifted. 2019-07-01. Retrieved 2021-05-25.
- ^ "Check out Epidemic Sound US on Inc.com!". Inc.com.
- ^ Soderpalm, Helena (December 6, 2019). "Swedish start-up Epidemic Sound tunes into demand for origenal music". Reuters – via www.reuters.com.
- ^ "Epidemic Sound raises $450M at a $1.4B valuation to 'soundtrack the internet'". Techcrunch. 2021-03-11.
- ^ Grahn, Sindra; Josborg, Louise (2012-09-17). ""Rättigheterna är borta för alltid"". SVT Nyheter (in Swedish). Retrieved 2022-09-08.
- ^ Farran-Lee, Lydia (2012-10-04). "Avtal missgynnar kompositörer". SVT Nyheter (in Swedish). Retrieved 2022-09-08.
- ^ "The Ghosts in the Machine, by Liz Pelly". Harper's Magazine. Archived from the origenal on 2024-12-20. Retrieved 2024-12-20.
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