London app studio Emoticast has closed a $1.2m seed funding round for the launch of the world’s first music emoji store for Facebook.
Backed by people who definitely envision more use for this than me, the cash comes from angels including Jorg Mohaupt, investor in music startup Deezer, Jason Epstein, who joined Napster when it was bought by Rhapsody in 2011, Scott Cohen of digital distribution company The Orchard, and Alan Cannistraro, a former software engineer at Facebook.
The company launched last year and the TuneMoji store, which brings licensed music emojis to 700 million Facebook users across the world, will be its first finished product.
“Over 50bn messages are sent every day on messaging platforms, with in some cases more than 50% containing emoji,” said James Fabricant, CEO and cofounder. “So far these have been sent in perfect silence and absent any music.
“Emoticast will change this, empowering people to communicate with more emotion, something that music is uniquely equipped to do.”
Emoticast is currently on the lookout for Android and iOS developers.