Elton John and David Furnish have invested approximately $5.03 million (£4.1 million) into Audoo, a London-based technology company whose Audio Meter tool can automatically measure and report song plays in public establishments.

Audoo who? Audoo has raised over $22 million since its launch in 2018. The latest round The follows Audoo’s £5.2 million ($6.4 million) series A funding round in 2020 and £7.2 million pre-series B fundraising in 2021. The company now includes CISAC president Björn Ulvaeus, Paul McCartney’s MPL Ventures, Edinv and others as investors.

Around two months ago, Audoo partnered with UK-based music rights management organizations PRS for Music and PPL to enhance the distribution of music royalties to more than 300,000 rights holders. Its latest round will help the company achieve its goals of enhancing reporting accuracy and delivering "fair and accurate payments to rights holders."

What they're saying: In a statement, John discussed the importance of properly paying artists and how streaming tallies could impact their earnings.

"Working as a musician can be seen as all glitz and glamour but for the vast majority of artists, especially new and emerging acts, this isn’t the case," he said. "It’s often brutally unfair and this sadly extends into being paid correctly. Right now, artists are not being paid accurately for their plays because the data simply doesn’t exist. People have given up on their dreams and we’ve lost talent and future stars because of this disparity. That’s why we’ve invested in Audoo and their world-class technology and data, to help create a more transparent system for everyone, and ultimately to keep the music alive."

Audoo founder and CEO Ryan Edwards added, "Being able to draw on the support of artists in our mission to revolutionize the royalty space has been key to Audoo’s success. We are proud to welcome more icons to aid the next stage of our journey. With Elton and David’s strategic investment, we continue to champion and deliver a fairer and more transparent music industry for creatives to benefit for generations to come. We look forward to welcoming more international partners, licensees and creators to join us on this industry-changing journey."