Trqk

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About Trqk

Trqk is a Music Royalty Intelligence platform dedicated to helping creators and publishers work more efficiently while growing their income with strategic royalty insights. The platform combines data science, business intelligence, and music information retrieval (MIR) techniques to provide a big picture view of historical royalties, allowing clients to identify and reclaim missed royalties, understand peer and industry-wide royalty trends to target more lucrative business, and maximize licensing negotiations.

In 2020, the company released TrqkIQ, a visualization, detection, and insight platform for performance royalties. Powered by powerful data science and business intelligence, TrqkIQ brings key analytics to life from historical performance royalties, allowing clients to see how their royalties are performing and flowing in a snap. It also utilizes sophisticated MIR technology to detect performances that might have been missed, giving creators the opportunity to collect unpaid royalties. Using the cross-industry TrqkIQ Insights Index™ database, the platform quickly points out trends and opportunities.

TrqkIQ holds strong benefits for all sides of the market, including publishers, catalogs, and PROs looking to open new revenue streams or analyze potential catalog acquisitions or publishing deals; music creators who need to discover unpaid royalties and determine how to attain more lucrative licensing deals; and music users, who need to find the best music licensing strategy for their brands and ensure they are staying legal by discovering and paying all the royalties they owe.

Founded in 2019, Trqk is the brainchild of veteran music producer, music supervisor, and composer David Della Santa (Chief Creative Officer), who has spent over two decades in the music industry. As founder of custom music house Volume.ms, he has composed scores, produced multiple genres, and selected and licensed songs by up-and-coming indie artists for clients such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Nike, Reebok, Audi, Wells Fargo, and Quaker Oats, among over 500 total placements. When the sync market took a dip due to the transition from broadcast to digital as well as the rise of royalty-free licensing, Della Santa began administering his own publishing and performance royalties, quickly realizing the complexity of the process and how creators often miss out on their fair share of royalties due to illegal/unlicensed usage of music and mis-administered royalty claims. He set out to solve these problems with TrqkIQ™.

After coming up with the idea for the platform, Della Santa reconnected with childhood friend, high school bandmate, and expert company builder Sathvik Krishnamurthy (Executive Chairman), bringing him on as co-founder. Krishnamurthy is a Silicon Valley veteran with several successful exits, including two IPOs, and more recently served as CEO of the Stanford spinout Voltage Security, which was acquired by HP. He is the founder of seed stage investor/incubator SLC, which incubated Trqk.

With Della Santa as Chief Creative Officer, bringing his deep understanding of the music industry, and Krishnamurthy as Executive Chairman, bringing his track record of building successful businesses from the ground up, Trqk then rounded out their team with expert executives and advisors who have deep experience in music tech, data science, and performance rights. The technology team includes CTO Eric Peterson, a veteran technologist, solutions architect, and music session engineer; Front-End Architect Alex Nitta, an experienced web engineer formerly of Loudr who focuses on UI/UX and developer workflow; Data Scientist Jeff Treviño, PhD, a data analysis and wrangling expert; and Technology Advisors Stephen Pope, a MIR expert, and Nik Kalyani, Co-Founder and CEO of WhenHub. Music Advisors include Nan Wilson, Founder of one of the largest U.S. advertising royalty administrators Manage Ad Music, and 20+ year music and media executives Stephen Rhodes, previously of The Harry Fox Agency and Universal Music Group, and Stephen Lubin, previously of ASCAP and Co-Founder and CEO of MediaGuide, which was acquired by iHeartMedia.

For more information on Trqk, visit www.trqk.io.

David Della Santa – Co-Founder & Chief Creative Officer

David Della Santa is a veteran music producer, music supervisor, and composer who has spent over two decades in the music industry. In 2019, he co-founded Music Royalty Intelligence platform Trqk, which is dedicated to helping creators and publishers work more efficiently while growing their income with strategic royalty insights. He currently serves as the company’s Chief Creative Officer, overseeing the development and launch of its TrqkIQ service. The service enables clients to identify and reclaim missed royalties, understand peer and industry-wide royalty trends to target more lucrative business, and maximize licensing negotiations.

Della Santa’s first-hand experiences as Founder, Executive Music Producer, Music Supervisor, and Lead Composer of custom music house Volume.ms strongly influenced his decision to create Trqk. Over the course of his creative career, he has composed scores, produced multiple genres, and selected and licensed songs by up-and-coming indie artists for clients such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Nike, Reebok, Audi, Wells Fargo, and Quaker Oats, among over 500 total placements. After the transition from broadcast to digital and the rise of royalty-free licensing, Della Santa began administering his own performance royalties, leading him to delve into the many problems facing creators, publishers, Performance Rights Organizations (PROs), and music users. This led him to develop the idea for Trqk and reconnect with his childhood friend, high school bandmate, and expert company builder Sathvik Krishnamurthy to make it a reality.

A graduate of California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo with a Bachelor’s degree in Project Management, Della Santa has also served as Owner, Composer, and Producer at cutting-edge digital commercial music house Rebar Sound in San Francisco; Composer at boutique commercial music house tonefarmer in New York City; and Partner at boutique music library NoiseHeap LLC.

Della Santa lives in Austin, TX, with his wife, three children, and pet cat, which they recently found and adopted at a nearby rest stop. Music is his life, and even when he has free time, you can find him writing new songs or listening to his favorite ’80s new wave bands, including The Cars, New Order, Depeche Mode, Joy Division, and Duran Duran. He is also an avid skier.

Sathvik Krishnamurthy – Co-Founder & Executive Chairman

Sathvik Krishnamurthy is an expert company builder and Silicon Valley veteran with several successful exits, including two IPOs and an acquisition by HP. He is the founder of seed stage investor/incubator SLC, as well as Co-Founder and Executive Chairman at Trqk, a Music Royalty Intelligence platform dedicated to helping creators and publishers work more efficiently while growing their income with strategic royalty insights.

Krishnamurthy served as VP/GM at Worldtalk and VP, Marketing & Business Development at ValiCert, building both companies from early-stage startups to IPOs. He was also President/CEO of Voltage Security, a Stanford spinout which was acquired by HP in 2015. In 2019, he reconnected with childhood friend, high school bandmate, and veteran music producer, music supervisor, and composer David Della Santa, working with him to co-found Trqk. The company launched its TrqkIQ™ service in 2020, which enables customers to identify and reclaim missed royalties, understand peer and industry-wide royalty trends to target more lucrative business, and maximize licensing negotiations. Krishnamurthy’s venture firm incubated Trqk and led its pre-seed investment round.

A graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) with a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Engineering, Krishnamurthy has been interviewed on major networks such as FOX Business and spoken at top conferences such as the RSA Conference. He is married with two teenaged children and lives in San Jose, CA. In his free time, he enjoys golf and playing Eagles tunes on the guitar.