After starting out as a marketplace for live music artists seeking gigs, Surreal is now setting its sights on becoming the go-to infrastructure for the world’s entertainment industry after making inroads with its new ‘agency productivity tool’.
The Melbourne-based Surreal, founded in 2019 by Jeremiah Siemianow, Brandon Crimmins and Alan Jin, changed its name from Muso last year in move that reflects the company’s evolution over the past five years.
While it has expanded beyond musicians and DJs to service performing artists including comedians, karaoke, trivia suppliers and drag queens, Surreal also has developed a solid business providing backroom support for talent agencies and venues.
Over the past year, the Surreal platform has supported about 68,000 gigs in Australia and the UK, where it has been established since 2022.
This is expected to grow further in 2024 after the company launched its new agency productivity tool for the global market in early January.
Surreal is specifically targeting the US where it has signed up Backline Partners, its first agency in the North American market.
Siemianow, the Surreal CEO, says while Backline Partners is not a major agency, it does cover three states (Colorado, Illinois and California) and represents a ‘big first move into the market for us’.
“It’s an exciting space to be in and we’re going for it,” Siemianow tells Business News Australia.
“There’s a lot of opportunity for us and for a platform like ours. We are head and shoulders above anything else on the market.”
Backline joins a number of Australia-based agencies using Surreal, including WAT Artists, Listen Up, Sounds Good Agency, Together Agency, Neumark Productions and UNDR ctrl.
Siemianow describes the Surreal platform as an ‘elegant answer to the complex workflows of the industry’. The platform has three separate products for artists, venues and talent agencies, including tools for artists to manage their schedule, bookings and payments.
While performing artists remain at the core of the Surreal community, the key revenue generator for the Software as a Service (SaaS) business is in providing back-end services talent agencies and for entertainment venues such as pubs and clubs.
“Right now, we are focusing on the agency productivity tool and that is where a lot of the complex interactions between parts of the industry exist,” says Siemianow.
