BandLab, the Singapore-based social music-making platform for musicians who create, collaborate and share music together — on Wednesday announced it has acquired Chew, the London-based livestreaming service that has been described as “Twitch for DJs.”
Together, BandLab’s social, digital tools for musicians and Chew’s performance and streaming-focused platform will further empower creators to make, collaborate, publish and perform online. Chew will continue as a discrete service, rebranded as “Chew by BandLab.” In addition, livestreaming technology will be integrated into BandLab’s web platform, Android & iOS apps for use by BandLab’s existing user base of close to 2 million users.
“Chew by BandLab” will continue in its current model as a free platform, with a premium subscription option for the community’s creators, which includes stream forwarding, on-demand archiving and much more.
“I am very pleased that Chew will now be supported by our BandLab Technologies team. For the past two years, I’ve been closely watching the growth and development of this great platform and community of DJs,” said Meng Ru Kuok, BandLab’s CEO and co-founder. “Performing live has always been one of the most important parts of being a musician and has never been more important. As an extension of that, it’s extremely important for us to be able to digitally support creators and musicians who want to bring their live performances to the world. This is true to one of our core values at BandLab of empowering musicians of any genre, experience level or level of resources. With Chew in the BandLab family, it means we can deliver more great technology and a fantastic streaming product to our users, as well as welcome in a group of incredibly talented and passionate people to our broader community.”
Added Wil Benton, Chew’s CEO and co-founder: “I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve built since launching in 2015. We’ve brought together a highly engaged and creative community of DJs, producers and creators in music together and shared some incredible experiences, shared live via the Chew platform. I’m delighted that we’ve been able to find the right partner to continue the work we started — a partner who has the technical and creative know-how to properly support and grow our community. Partnering with BandLab guarantees both expert support for our incredible users, but also ensures the continuation of our vision for a vibrant community of DJs and musicians sharing their creative processes live.”