27 most exciting media startups to follow closely (2024)

December 19, 2023

Top media startups that are changing the way the media works in the online world

The media industry is one that’s constantly changing and evolving. As people become more aware of their online presence and their digital identity, they’re looking for ways to protect that. This has led to a rise in the number of media startups that focus on privacy and security.

Consequently, the number of media startups has increased significantly over the past few years. Some of them are offering great products, while others have yet to prove themselves as viable competitors in this space. 

However, one thing is for sure – the digital revolution has transformed the way media is consumed by audiences and has also led to a shift in consumer behavior towards online platforms. 

What are media startups?

Media startups are companies that provide technology, services, or content that help media organizations grow their businesses. The term “media startup” is often used to describe a business that provides new types of content or services that didn’t exist before it came along.

 

The most promising media startups

Since the media industry is dynamic and it’s constantly changing, new players are emerging and old ones are fading away. Here are some of the currently most promising startups in the media industry.

PRYNTD

PRYNTD is a media startup that is focused to embrace musicians. This startup pioneers an immersive mixed reality and wearables with a haptics platform, giving an opportunity to musicians to showcase their music and better engage with fans.

The platform integrates social media live streaming and it’s useful for shows with present and streaming fans and also for deeper artist-fan engagement. Moreover, merchandise, sold on the platform by artists is affordable immersive wearables with electro-tactile haptic feedback to fully immerse the fan in the in-person or live-streaming experience.

The Story Market

The Story Market developed a solution that helps creators and publishers analyze their own and competitors’ content via Natural Language Processing (NLP) and AI. The main goal of having this data is so they can then use this knowledge to steer their content strategy. 

Additionally, this fast-growing media startup helps publishers source high-quality content from publications and freelancers worldwide. This is a global content marketplace that connects freelance publishers and journalists. It can be used for publishers to find journalists through uploaded stories or receive recommendations and buy online or print licenses for them.

Pluto TV

Pluto TV is the leading free streaming television service. This media startup delivers hundreds of live linear channels and thousands of titles on-demand, hence consequently to the quality and diverse content they have, their global audience counts over 64 million monthly active users. 

The startup is headquartered in Los Angeles but is growing its international footprint and it’s available across three continents and 26 countries. Furthermore, this media service curates a diverse lineup of channels, in partnership with nearly 400 international media companies, offering a wide array of genres, categories, and languages.

Fanatiz

Focused on sports, Fanatiz is another high-value streaming platform that broadcasts sporting events and channels online, on VOD, and live. This is one of the most promising media startups in 2022 since the users are already loving the fact that they can access the best sports content on all their screens and favorite devices.

Fanatiz offers both monthly and annual subscriptions and is the only platform available today that customizes the entire online customer experience. More specifically, it’s allowing viewers to select their favorite team and be fed unique details and updates ongoing (match times, player stats, and highlights, to name a few).

Podscribe

Podscribe is the leader in automated Quality Assurance for podcast (and YouTube) ads. To make sure your podcast ads run perfectly, this media startup integrates a blend of AI and human review. Moreover, they provide the industry’s only at-scale human brand safety scores based on IAB/GARM standards.

Having Podscribe take care of your ads gives advertisers confidence with their buys, especially on smaller less-known podcasts. This media company can take care of competitive separation, correct length, correct spot (eg mid vs pre-roll), brand-safe, and more.

Epidemic Sound

Epidemic Sound is a global MusicTech company from Sweden that can cover you with high-quality music and sound effects for all your content and with all rights included. This media startup is stealing the spotlight in the industry by having democratized access to music for storytellers. 

Its innovative digital rights model paves the way for creators. That’s because everyone from YouTubers to small businesses to the world’s largest brands can use ‘restriction-free music’ to take their videos to the next level, whilst simultaneously supporting the musicians it works with both creatively and financially.

Newsadoo

Newsadoo uses machine learning algorithms to analyze content and readers’ behavior. Then, via their platform, it offers users the news that will be of their interest. This media startup has the nickname Spotify for news because once a user finishes reading an article, they are able to move on to the constant flow of content on the same topic from other publishers.

Additionally, users can choose from regional, national, and international newspapers and magazines and it’s available for free on all devices. They also have a Trending Stories feature so you can see what’s happening at a glance.

MainStreaming

Another one on the list of most innovative media startups is MainStreaming. This media company enables media, broadcasters, and enterprise companies to deliver video with the best quality of experience to their audience, globally. 

They deliver live and on-demand video, integrating all operative phases for ingesting, encoding, management, and distribution. The team of MainStreaming has a mission to foster an AI technology revolution that will shake the traditional architecture, thus, they’re paving the path for innovative intelligent distribution, which will exponentially improve network efficiency, streaming governance, and resource optimization.

Zuddl

Zuddl is another one of the rising media startups that let large companies host branded conferences online. From expo showcases to one-on-one networking meetings, Zuddl reproduces all aspects of a physical event.

Being aware that until now, online conferences often feel like a one-way webinar and in most cases, attendees have no impact on the outcome, this media company decided to make a change. Therefore, the team behind Zuddl built a library of templates for all of the configurable elements of conferences. Using this solution, companies can build off of existing templates and get their event up and running within minutes.

Locker

Another favorite media startup for sports lovers is Locker. This startup delivers the personalized world sports fans deserve by working with hundreds of the world’s greatest sports publishers. They are delivering the stories you need to see right to your feed according to pre-selected favorite teams, players, etc.

Locker is an easy-to-use app that finds the top trending sports stories across the world’s top websites and social platforms to ensure you never miss the pieces that matter. Live scores,  performance ratings, league tables, and player profiles are just a few of the real-time stats you will have at your fingertips.

Zvook

Zvook is a podcast advertising platform for marketers that are not afraid to think and work outside the box. This is an AI-powered media startup built for brands and inspired by storytellers and it helps brands find the most relevant podcasts and book host-read ads in just a few clicks.

They make audio advertising instant, simple, transparent, and monetizable from day one. Furthermore, this innovative platform empowers marketers with everything they need in one place to handle managing, searching, and booking their podcast buys.

MatchCasts

MatchCasts is an end-to-end platform for audio advertising and a suite of discovery, analytics, insights, and campaign tools that empower brands and agencies to easily run their advertising. With those features, brands can comfortably create audio campaigns that resonate with any audience in any language.

Using this platform, brands can create a host-read script or upload their own audio ads, run audio campaigns, choose from a variety of advertising options from pre-roll and midroll to a variety of sponsorship options, and more.

Ride Home Media

Ride Home Media is not just another media startup focused on podcasts, but it offers TL;DR as a service for busy people. Thus, every weekday they publish the daily briefing for technology industry decision-makers and influencers – Techmeme Ride Home.

Furthermore, another podcast that is published every weekday is the Kottke Ride Home. This is a podcast featuring the coolest stuff that happened in the world today. Progress, science, life-hacks, memes, exciting art, and hope.

Brut.

Brut. is a global media startup that creates short-form video content. They have an audience from around the world and you can find topics divided into many categories, covering from most trending topics today to global warming and other environmental and social interest topics, etc.

This media startup publishes content daily across eight social platforms and is available in three languages. It’s generating over 1,5B views a month and is considered to be one of the most reliable media platforms this year.

WorldPlus

WorldPlus is a media startup that is disrupting how digital magazines are created and is revolutionizing the media industry by providing people with interactive content experiences through innovative technologies.

By breaking down the traditional styles of reading magazines WorldPlus stole the spotlight in the media industry. With a growth mindset, innovative solutions, and a progressive work environment they deliver world-renowned magazines in 8 languages in a digital and interactive format.

Citispotter Limited

Citispotter Limited helps companies produce entertaining, inclusive, and safer content. With AI-powered content assistant, this media startup is helping businesses to use gender-inclusive and safe language, target the appropriate emotions, and manage brand messages by generating bespoke style guidelines for their employees. 

This innovative technology detects insensitive or negative tones and language that violates the brand’s standards and values and reduces the danger of inconsistent and insensitive messages by automating the editing process and decreasing human supervision by 90%.

Newslit

Newslit tracks over 100K media sources and social signals to make sure its user only get the stories that matter to them. It makes it easy to monitor the web for interesting new content and breaking news headlines to help you hone in on your competitors, industry, and brands for accurate market research.

The team of Newslit is doing everything to make media monitoring made simple. All you need to do is choose your topic, and refine your search and you will get the news wherever you need them. After that, you can use their integration tools to share your content anywhere.

Artlist

Founded in 2016, Artlist operates an online marketplace with thousands of high-quality music and SFX tracks available for licensing. Their catalog spans genres and moods for enhancing video, apps, podcasts, and more.

Compared to traditional stock audio sites, Artlist focuses on Unlimited subscriptions with unlimited downloads. This simplified model suits small creative teams needing affordable, straight-forward music access.With strong growth since launch, Artlist streamlines audio licensing so creators can focus on bringing projects to life.

Restream

Founded in 2014, Restream provides tools to stream video simultaneously to various social and video platforms with ease. Users can broadcast to sites like Twitch, YouTube, Facebook together.

Restream’s technology eliminates the need for multiple encoding setups. Creators can manage content and engage audiences from one dashboard

Data Skrive

Founded in 2021, Data Skrive automatically generates articles and narratives using sports data and machine learning algorithms. Their AI-generated text covers games, matches, teams, and players.

The platform customizes content for clients’ unique needs and audiences. By automating personalized sports reporting, Data Skrive provides scalable production capacity.

Podfund

Founded in 2019, Podfund provides capital investments specifically to independent podcast creators and networks. Their goal is to enable podcasters to grow their audience and content.

Podfund focuses on podcasts with engaged communities and high-quality content. Investments to date include true crime and independent news shows generating millions of downloads.

Asian Boss

Founded in 2017 by Stephen Park, Asian Boss has experienced tremendous growth by leveraging social media and technology. The company produces original video content focused on topics relevant to young Asians worldwide.

Their videos provide candid perspectives on issues ranging from dating and relationships to social trends and politics. Street interviews are a signature of Asian Boss, capturing uncensored public opinion.

Lingokids

Founded in 2016 by parents Cristóbal Viedma and Thibault de Chassepoir, Lingokids was created to fill a need for effective and entertaining language learning resources for kids. Viedma and de Chassepoir were frustrated by the lack of quality digital language tools for their own young children.

Lingokids provides lessons in over 40 language courses including Spanish, French, Mandarin, and German. The curriculum combines vocabulary building, basic grammar, pronunciation, and cultural awareness.

Greenfly

Founded in 2012 by former NFL player Osi Umenyiora, Greenfly began as a platform to help athletes monetize their social media influence. Athletes could use Greenfly to easily create and share branded content for sponsors.

Over time, Greenfly expanded its capabilities to serve additional industries. The platform makes it simple for businesses to coordinate and manage user-generated content from any influencer or brand supporter

Uscreen

Founded in 2013, Uscreen provides the technology and infrastructure for creators to launch customized video streaming services. This allows them to control and monetize their content while building direct relationships with viewers.

Creators can use Uscreen to build their own branded channels, set pricing plans, manage subscribers, and track analytics. Features like multi-device video playback, offline viewing, and digital rights management help them optimize viewer experience.

Nextup

Founded in 2020, Nextup provides a dedicated home for up-and-coming and established comedians to share their work. The platform offers fans exclusive access to original comedy they won’t find anywhere else.

Nextup features a mix of recorded stand-up specials, podcasts, sketch shows, panel shows, and other comedy programming. The content spans a wide range of styles from musical comedy to improv to deadpan humor.Many comedians on Nextup are rising stars on the UK comedy circuit.

Veed

Founded in 2019, Veed aims to make online video creation accessible to everyone. The platform provides intuitive tools to produce high-quality videos without professional skills.

Key features of Veed include a drag-and-drop video editor, over 50 million royalty-free media assets, customizable templates, and built-in collaboration. Users can add effects, transitions, filters, text, and more with just a few clicks.Veed also enables multi-language subtitling through machine translation and an online transcription editor.

What these media startups have in common

The most successful media startups know their audience inside out – no fan is off-limits, no follower irrelevant. They know how to engage their audience in a way that feels natural and authentic. This helps them grow organically by word-of-mouth instead of paying for exposure on social media platforms like Facebook or Instagram.

Moreover, they’re adaptable to changing times and are always on the lookout for ways to better serve their customers’ needs with new products, services, or content formats. They are always thinking about how to make their content stand out from other content in their niche.  

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