Tech: Jaxsta signs debut commercial deal for its music database platform

Just over one year after joining the ASX via a backdoor listing, music database company Jaxsta (ASX:JXT) is on the board.

The company announced its first commercial deal this morning, booking a subscription arrangement with performing rights organisation APRA AMCOS.

APRA is Australia’s oldest copyright collection agency, and licenses music rights for a membership group of over 100,000 musicians.

As part of the deal, APRA purchased 270 subscriptions to the Jaxsta Pro database service, for use by its staff and company ambassadors, in a $25,000 transaction.

The arrangement will also see Jaxsta offer reduced-price subscriptions to APRA’s membership base, while the two sides will also work together on an education and marketing campaign.

Jaxsta CEO Jacque Louez Schoorl said that successfully closing its first commercial deal amounted to a “clear strategic push to commercialise the Jaxsta Pro product and work with organisations to offer large subscription-based deals to their members”.

The company’s core aim is to build the world’s largest database of credits so anyone involved in creating a song — from songwriters to musicians and engineers — receives credit for their role in the production process.

To this point most of Jaxsta’s revenue has come from research grants, and the company completed a $2.7m share placement to sophisticated investors in December.

Investors responded positively to news of the company’s first commercial agreement, sending the stock up as much as 30 per cent in morning trade.

In other ASX tech news today:

IT company Dropsuite (ASX:DSE) said it’s continuing to execute on its global growth strategy, with five new partnerships and production integrations in the December quarter. The cloud software platform — which is focused on email archiving and data backup solutions — said all new partners had been successfully on-boarded and would provide a base for more diversified recurring revenue streams. Shares in the company were up 12 per cent in morning trade at 5.6c.

Shares in software company LiveTiles (ASX:LVT) also performed strongly, after a trading update that showed annual recurring revenue rose to $52.7m as at December 31, 2019. The result was up from $42.9m as at September 30 and $5.1m of the increase was driven by organic growth, complemented by income of $4.7m from the acquisition of CYCL in December. LVT shares were up 8.3 per cent to 28.7c.