Founder of music credits platform Jaxsta leaves the company

Jaxsta (ASX: JXT) founder Jacqui Louez Schoorl has today announced she will step down as director of the company, just three months after leaving her role as CEO of the music credits database.

It brings to a close what Schoorl described as “an amazing journey”, having founded the Sydney-based company officially in 2015 and subsequently listing it on the ASX in late-December 2018.

“We are now the largest official music credits database in the world. Jaxsta helps so many creatives enhance their career opportunities by most importantly ensuring they get credit where credit is due,” Schoorl said.

“I am encouraged with the team in place to take Jaxsta to its next level. Seeing my original vision become a reality has been an incredible experience. I know there is so much more ahead for the Company.”

The company’s CEO Beth Appleton, who stepped into the role in April, thanked Schoorl for her vision and for spearheading the concept which acts as an IMDB-like database for songs, demystifying exactly who worked on songs from songwriters to session musicians, producers and engineers.

“Jacqui and I have been talking about Jaxsta since we met at a Women in Music Sydney event in 2018.

“The board, team, partners and I thank Jacqui for her incredible vision, dedication and determination to bring Jaxsta into the world. Her vision was incredibly inspiring back then and I am bolstered by the trust given by Jacqui to take Jaxsta to the next level.

“We are on the next phase of this journey as we move to continue to commercialise Jaxsta on all fronts.”

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Those commercialisation plans were turned up a few levels one month ago after Jaxsta launched business and enterprise subscription tiers for its database.

The subscriptions, which will let Jaxsta earn recurring revenue, open up the company’s complete dataset to paying users with tools to support improved royalty identification, collection and enhanced reporting.

“Without official music credits the industry is hindered from accurate efficient revenue collection,” Appleton said at the time.

“Without a platform for discovering who has contributed to a song or how to connect with the copyright representatives efficiently, opportunities are lost.

“From a data perspective, Jaxsta is the source of truth the music industry has been looking for and our platform now has a self-serve solution with this new B2B oriented subscription offering.”

Previously, Jaxsta offered two subscription models – Jaxsta Core, a free introductory membership, and Jaxsta Plus, a paid subscription for creators. Existing Jaxsta Plus members will automatically move to the Creator tier of membership, while existing free users will have reduced access to the platform encouraging upgrade to a paid subscription.

The company is also backed by music licensing marketplace Songtradr which made a $1.4 million investment in Jaxsta in September 2020, followed up by a further $3 million in April this year.

That latest injection of capital extended the existing strategic partnership between the two under which Jaxsta got access to a bespoke tech-enabled revenue identification and collection service from Songtradr.

The founder’s departure comes as the JXT share price has been languishing at low levels since the beginning of 2020.

Shares are currently trading at less than a 10th of what they were in late-2019 when the company’s was priced at about 35 cents per share. Now, JXT is worth about 3 cents per share and has a market capitalisation of about $10.2 million.

The company remains loss-making, having reported a $3.2 million loss for 1H22 - about $1 million more than what it recorded in the six months to 31 December 2020.

Whilst the group is still in a largely pre-revenue stage, with most of its income in the December half coming from an R&D tax incentive and an export development grant, its miniscule revenue nonetheless doubled to almost $31,000 -  the result of the company’s August 2021 launch of its ‘Jaxsta Pro’ tier which had 600 subscribers as at 31 December 2021 and has since been replaced by the two new enterprise and business subscription tiers.

As of February 28, the company claims its database contains 224.3 million credits for 40.5 million recordings, as well as details of 1.49 million labels.

“The half-year ended 31 December 2021 was the first step towards normalising the business post the initial COVID-19 changes,” Jaxsta said on releasing its results.

“As a pre-revenue venture, the focus was on safely continuing operations and continuing the development of the Jaxsta platform whilst engaging customers during the free membership promotion.”