Piano Media

Piano Media, now Piano, is a SaaS software company specialising in media business content monetisation, including digital subscriptions (aka paywalls), marketing automation and personalisation for publishers across print, online and broadcast media. The company was founded in 2010 by Tomas Bella the Editor-in-Chief of Slovak daily newspaper SME. Piano Media foresaw the decline in digital revenues derived from banner ads and wanted to provide publishers with another revenue stream. As paid content was not common in 2010, Piano's product was a national paywall that allowed users to access multiple online media websites with a single digital subscription. Piano launched its first national paywall in 2011 in Slovakia and later in Slovenia. The company closed a €2 million funding round from 3TS Capital Partners in April 2012 to finance further expansion, including a national paywall in Poland in September 2012. In 2013, while operating three national paywalls in Central Europe, Piano attempted to expand the national paywall concept unsuccessfully into Western Europe. Eventually the business model evolved into selling its digital subscription software on a publisher-by-publisher basis. One of the first West European customers was German publisher M. DuMont Shauberg. In 2014, Piano Media entered the U.S. digital subscription market by acquiring US-based Press+ from RR Donnelley & Sons. The acquisition of Press+ made Piano Media the largest provider of metered paywalls worldwide with more than 1200 news and media providers globally using their platform. In August 2015 the company merged with another US-based paywall provider, Tinypass and rebranded as Piano.