Music Rights Firm Haawk Acquires Keyframe

Music rights management startup Haawk has acquired Keyframe Audio, a music licensing platform that provides premium quality royalty free music. Financial terms of the deal between Haawk, in Studio City, and Keyframe, in Los Angeles, were not disclosed. Haawk said the acquisition of Keyframe will help it expand services to the “micro stock” music market, which lets video producers access unlimited downloads of 50,000 royalty-free stock music tracks. The price of the service starts at $49 per year. Haawk’s main business is monitoring music in user-generated content on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram for record labels and music libraries. The company was founded by Ryan Born, whose previous ventures Audio Micro and Ad Rev, both in Sherman Oaks, were acquired in 2016 by Zealot Networks, in Venice. Those startups also handled online rights management for music.