Pop music ecommerce play Popdust picks up $4.5 million from NEA, SoftBank

While Microsoft is busy building a brand new music product, and Apple collects a fat chunk of the world’s music revenues, a small company is taking music in a different direction. Instead of selling tracks, Popdust is selling hats.

And more, Popdust has moved from being a website on celebrities, to being a platform to sell the stuff that is associated them. And as their traffic, and presumably their revenue, has grown, investors have noticed. That interest has turned into capital. The firm has closed a $4.5 million Series A round led by New Enterprise Associates, that also included RRE Ventures and SoftBank Capital.

That’s a fat stack for a company that only recent crossed the one million uniques per month level, but given the company’s strong focus on monetizable activities, selling items, it could be that its sales figures were its most interesting feature.

According to the firm’s press release, it is the place “where music fans can shop for clothing, shoes, jewelry, and accessories.” Collections are often tied to artists, such as Karmin, who curated the inaugural set, giving them a brand all their own.

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You don’t hear of many ecommerce companies snagging funding these days, mostly because they simply can’t scale as a non-commerce based companies such as Instagram once did. But that doesn’t mean that they can’t become large, prosperous businesses, right? Alright Popdust, let’s see what you can do with this cash injection. We’re watching.