SmashHaus – AI Music Licensing & Creator Marketplace

SmashHaus is a two-sided SaaS marketplace connecting independent music creators directly with media companies — TV shows, films, advertising agencies, gaming studios, and fitness brands. The pitch is disintermediation: cut out the music supervisor middleman and let creators license their work directly to the companies that need it. The platform has been around since 2008 but only converted to a SaaS model in 2023, which means the revenue track record on the current model is relatively short.

What makes this stand out from the dozens of music licensing platforms out there is the social proof. Testimonials from the Music Director at Saturday Night Live, a Director of The Simpsons, the Composer of Pirates of the Caribbean, Suze Orman, and the President of LA Magazine aren't filler — those are real signals that the founder has genuine Hollywood relationships. That's a moat most buyers couldn't build from scratch.

The numbers on paper look solid: 69% profit margins, 93,000 users, 2.3 million contacts, and a claimed 15 million subscribers on an associated radio channel. MRR sits at $26,760 with 77,000 active subscribers at an overall churn rate of 4.7%. The platform is also flagged as "Editor's Choice" on Flippa, suggesting it passed a basic vetting threshold.

The risks here are significant though. This is a partial sale — you'd be buying 90% of a business where the founder (Dylan Berry) remains a 10% stakeholder, and crucially, the whole platform's credibility is built on his personal relationships and creative reputation. Suze Orman didn't hire SmashHaus; she hired Dylan Berry. That's a meaningful distinction. The listing also mentions the founder wants to move to a "fractional business development role" — so he's not stepping away entirely, which creates ambiguity about control and direction post-acquisition.

The SaaS conversion only happened in 2023, which means you're buying a relatively short revenue history on the current model. The headline $155K revenue figure seems to be annual, not monthly — MRR of $26,760 annualises to around $321K, so verify the exact revenue window carefully before making any offer.

Growth would likely need to come from:

• Activating the claimed 2 million incoming users from a recent acquisition — the nature and quality of this acquisition is unverified and warrants deep due diligence
• Expanding into non-music digital content (the seller mentions this as a planned "Amazon model" expansion)
• Converting the 15-million-subscriber radio channel audience into paying platform users
• Building outbound sales capacity for the enterprise/Hollywood side of the marketplace

The monetisation at 69% margins is actually quite strong for a marketplace — most two-sided marketplaces struggle to hold margins above 50% at this stage. That suggests either very low infrastructure costs or conservative expense reporting. Either way, confirm what's in and out of the cost structure.

What I would offer: $220,000–$240,000 The personal brand dependency and partial sale structure both warrant a meaningful discount. The 33.5x multiple on a 2-year-old SaaS conversion is ambitious. The Hollywood relationships are real but not transferable assets; a new owner would need to build their own rapport, and the seller's ongoing involvement is a variable, not a guarantee.

What the site is worth: $220,000–$265,000 For a strategic buyer — a music publisher, an entertainment-focused software company, or a media-tech operator — the user base and the studio relationships could legitimately justify $265K. For an individual operator buying their first SaaS, the transition risk is high enough to price this closer to $220K.

This is a deal for someone with existing entertainment or music industry contacts who can step into the founder's shoes credibly, not a set-and-forget SaaS acquisition.