Australia’s Unlockd among digital companies on global roll

Image: Unlockd CEO Matt Berriman

Australian start-up Unlockd is among three digital companies which expanded globally this week.

On the music side, UK digital music distributor Ditto Music, which has an office in Melbourne, continues its push into the US market. With offices in Nashville (February 2011) and Austin, Texas (May 2015), it now has its seventh global office in San Diego, California.

Ditto set up in 2005 in Liverpool and distributes to 160 digital music stores. It has over 80,000 independent artists and labels on its roster, and achieved eleven Top 40 hits in the UK with unsigned artists. It actively entered the Australian market in May 2013.

Amazon expanded its music streaming service Prime Music in the UK by providing members with different radio stations and “tens and thousands” on-screen lyrics to sing along to. It has a catalogue of 1.4 million. It’s now available in the four largest music markets, in the US as well as Germany and Japan.

The Lachlan Murdoch-backed telco and ad tech company Unlockd extended its reach into the US with one of the country’s largest mobile providers Sprint Telecom’s Boost Mobile which has 9 million customers. It also struck advertising partnerships with Twitter and Yahoo.

Unlockd works on a new business model, where customers can reduce their mobile bills by watching ads. Unlockd CEO and co-founder Matt Berriman has relocated from Melbourne to New York to drive its global expansion. It plans to be in six markets this year, including the UK (where it’s already signed with a major telco), Italy and Germany. It is also looking at partners in India, China, Indonesia and Thailand.

Unlockd launched in Australia last October with a team-up with Lebara Mobile although it is talking to other local telcos.