Producer and actor Issa Rae is stepping into the streaming business with her recent investment in Streamlytics, an analytics firm that tracks video and audio consumption.
Rae has taken a minority stake in the company founded by serial entrepreneur Angela Benton, whose previous companies include BlackWeb 2.0, a media platform for blacks in tech, and NewME, an accelerator targeted toward minorities that helped raise more than $47 million in funding.
Streamlytics was founded in 2018 as a way to democratize “access to streaming media data for both users and companies who want to leverage it.” Streamlytics analyzes what consumers who’ve opted into its services are streaming and then issues a license to those consumers to purchase their data that the company can sell to studios, marketers, etc.
“As streaming services become the standard for how people consume content and information, tools and companies like Streamlytics are necessary for transparency and consumer ownership,” Rae said in a statement. “Angela’s drive and innovative spirit is the reason why she is a pioneer in the tech space and why I’m excited to partner with her in this endeavor.”
Streamlytics also has a consumer-facing application, Clture, that aims to help minority consumers own and monetize their data.
“We’re in a unique moment in time where we have leverage as a community because of our power online and the tides turning in consumers’ favor for data ownership and portability,” Benton said in a blog post. “Communities of color already do so many things well, but without owning our data in a tangible way we’ll simply become slaves in a society built off our backs, again.”
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