Stockholm-based Tracklib, a platform providing licensed samples and stems for producers, has inked a licensing deal with BANDAI NAMCO Arts Inc.

Headquartered in Shibuya-ku, Tokyo, and headed by President Satoshi Kono, BANDAI NAMCO is known in the gaming world as the company behind the fighting franchise Tekken, Ultraman and Pac-Man. However, BANDAI NAMCO is also an operator of the music label Lantis.

Lantis is a label for Japanese musicians, anime soundtracks and video game soundtracks, and is a soundtrack publisher for wildly popular TV animes such as One-Punch Man.

The licensing agreement between the two companies will allow for existing original songs from BANDAI NAMCO Arts’s label to be used by music producers worldwide as samples and building blocks for new tracks.

The partnership has kicked off with the sound sources of BANDAI NAMCO Arts’s Higuchi Kaede, a virtual artist from Japanese VTuber group NIJISANJI (MBW has previously reported on the success of virtual artists).

These sounds have been added to Tracklib’s catalog of over 100,000 all-original recordings.

More tracks, stems, and sounds from BANDAI NAMCO Arts will continue to be added throughout 2022.

The partnership, says the company, “echoes the decades-long connection between hip hop and anime”, where the influence of Cartoon Network’s channel Toonami, as well anime films like Akira, can be heard in the output of artists such as Childish Gambino, Thundercat, Soulja Boy, and Kanye West.

“We are excited to be able to bring Anime Music, which holds a large portion of Japanese pop culture, to all overseas creators.”

Akiho Matsuo, BANDAI NAMCO Arts Inc.

Akiho Matsuo, Chief Producer of the Music Rights Department at BANDAI NAMCO Arts Inc., said: “We are excited to be able to bring Anime Music, which holds a large portion of Japanese pop culture, to all overseas creators.

“This will not only be about our original artists gaining new income; they will also gain whole new opportunities! We look forward to seeing songs created with our samples top the Billboard Charts in the near future.”

“Anime soundtracks are a major inspiration to artists and producers all over the world.”

Pӓr Almqvist, Tracklib

Pӓr Almqvist, Tracklib CEO & Co-founder, added: “Anime soundtracks are a major inspiration to artists and producers all over the world.

“We are very excited to now get them easy and legal access to BANDAI NAMCO Arts’s foundational catalog for the genre.”

In September 2021, Tracklib secured $12.2 million in investment in its latest funding round.

At the time, Tracklib told MBW that it had raised a total of $21.2 million in funding to date.

In June 2020, Tracklib raised $4.5 million in funding, in addition to $1.7 million raised in 2019 via the Sony Innovation Fund, WndrCo and Jörg Mohaupt, a private, early-stage investor who has invested in several other music companies including Discogs and Amuse.Music Business Worldwide