Story by Hypepotamus 

Marcus Cobb is a lifetime entrepreneur who, through a fashion company, landed in the music industry world and quickly became familiar with its unique challenges. He first set out to create a company to help labels find talent, but quickly realized there was an even more pressing problem that no one had tackled: making sure talent actually gets paid.

Through customer discovery and research, Cobb determined that 30-50 percent of music artists don’t see the full payment — or possibly any money at all — they deserve for their work. Much of this is because of outdated and clunky processes on the production side — complicated paperwork, compliance regulations, and poor communication. He founded Jammber as a tech-enabled tool to manage this payment process.

“Above all, Jammber is on a mission to give accurate credit where it’s due: to the creative individuals on which the music industry is built,” says Cobb.

After going through the Nashville-based Project Music accelerator, Jammber is rocking: with two offices in Chicago and Tennessee, they are soon to close on a $1.2 million seed round and have been chosen as one of five music tech startups to participate in this year’s hip hop-focused A3C Conference Music Tech Startup Spotlight.

Cobb says hip hop startups are the ideal target demographic for Jammber’s platform.

“Hip-hop in particular is a very fluid creative process,” says Cobb. “Our mobile is a designed to understand that, while still helping to facilitate discussions like percentage of ownership on a song or tracking everyone involved so you can properly license or release it. These tools can change peoples lives.”

Along with Jammber, Music Tech Day will see RecordGram (Miami, FL), TheUpNext (Chicago, IL) BrandSnap (London, UK), and RapChat (Columbus, OH) present in its inaugural Startup Spotlight. Check out the full lineup here.

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