Music Collectibles Platform Wax Poetics Raises $1 Million

Music collectibles platform and journal Wax Poetics has closed a $1 million funding round.

The investors:

• Kickstarter founder Perry Chen, WhoSampled CEO and Founder Nadav Poraz, and Mixcloud Co-Founder Nikhil Shah.

The strategy:

• The funds will be used to support Wax Poetics’ evolution from a music journal founded in Brooklyn in 2001 to a highly scalable music collectibles platform.

• They will be directed towards the development of its technology, and to enable key marketing and curation hires.

How it works:

• Wax Poetics enables artists, producers and creators to directly auction items to fans and collectors.

• Since its 2025 relaunch it has sold the highest-value demo cassette ever by a female artist: $54,050 for Mariah Carey’s tape.

• Other auctions have included items by Bootsy Collins, Louie Vega, and Arthur Baker, with a recently announced collection including one of the earliest known cassette recordings of Tupac.

What they said:

• Alex Bruh, CEO at Wax Poetics: “Wax Poetics has long been an important authority for music’s most knowledgeable fans. With the new model we are able to open up a much bigger, high scale opportunity around music collectibles, while staying true to our storytelling roots. This funding allows us to formalize what we’ve long known: music collecting is a huge opportunity and an often overlooked or undervalued market. We’re building the platform that finally does justice to the space.”