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Rhapsody invests in Dubset, an electronic dance music startup

Online music service Rhapsody follows Shazam by investing in a provider of rights management for mixed electronic music.

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Joan E. Solsman

Rhapsody

Online music service Rhapsody said Tuesday it invested in an electronic dance music startup, leading the series B funding round of Dubset Media.

The companies didn't disclose the amount of funding or valuation of Dubset following the investment.

Rhapsody, one of the oldest subscription music services on the Web, benefits from residing in the music industry's most thriving sector, but that has attracted a diverse and crowded field of competitors, from rapidly growing startups like Spotify to marketing powerhouses like Beats Music.

Electronic dance music, or EDM, and its own growth has been attracting digital services. Earlier this year, Shazam -- the app that automatically recognizes and identifies songs by listening to snippets of them -- sealed a partnership with Juno, one of the biggest stores for electronic dance music. It increased the number of dance tracks in Shazam's database by adding Juno's catalog of 4 million downloadable songs and, for the first time, making new vinyl releases available for identification.

Dubset Media is a music technology and distribution company. Its MixSCAN technology enables the registration, rights resolution, royalty reporting, and revenue clearing required for proper streaming and downloading of mixed music.

"This investment, the first for Rhapsody International, demonstrates our commitment to EDM," said Ethan Rudin, the chief financial officer of Rhapsody International. "Through our work with Dubset, we're supporting the development of alternative revenue streams for EDM artists and labels."