How Muse Streamlined GDPR Compliance and Accelerated Expansion in Europe

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Muse

LOCATION

London, UK

INDUSTRY

Event Ticketing

COMPANYSIZE

27 employees

PRODUCT USED

SecureSlate GDPR Compliance

“Compliance is a breeze with SecureSlate’s intuitive platform. It streamlined our processes, giving us more efficiency and confidence.”

Dave, Founder at Muse ‍

THE COMPANY

Revolutionizing DJ booking through data-driven audience matching

Muse was established to transform how event organizers discover and book DJs based on their target audience’s musical preferences. Founded by Dave and his team of music industry innovators, Muse set out with a clear mission: to create perfect musical experiences by connecting events with the ideal performers.

Their platform uses intelligent algorithms to analyze event genres and audience preferences, helping event organizers throughout Europe find the perfect musical match in minutes while enhancing attendee experiences. With a team of 27 employees based in London, Muse has successfully facilitated bookings for hundreds of events across the UK as of 2024, demonstrating their commitment to revolutionizing the event ticketing industry.

Dave initially launched the platform to streamline the DJ discovery and booking process. However, as the company gained traction in the European market, his role quickly expanded to include data privacy and compliance leadership. Muse handles sensitive customer data, such as event details, audience preferences, and booking information, and Dave quickly recognized the central role of data privacy and GDPR compliance in establishing trust with their European clients.

THE CHALLANGE

Using GDPR compliance as a gateway to European expansion

To address their initial growth challenges, Muse had implemented basic data protection measures and staff awareness training. This helped establish foundational security practices but wasn’t sufficient for the stringent requirements of the European market.

As Muse began engaging with more EU event organizers, Dave quickly realized that without formal GDPR compliance, sales conversations were stalling. Each potential client required extensive questionnaires about their data handling practices, diverting significant engineering resources away from product development.

‍ “As we started engaging with event organizers in the EU, we quickly realized the importance of GDPR. Without proper compliance, we were spending hours completing questionnaires instead of closing deals and building our platform.”

Dave, Founder at Muse ‍

Dave found his team spending increasing amounts of time researching GDPR requirements and trying to implement them with limited resources. He realized early on that Muse needed expert guidance to navigate the complex regulatory landscape and that it was unfeasible for his small engineering team to dedicate months to bringing the entire company up to GDPR standards.

Choosing a specialized compliance automation platform was an obvious, resource-efficient next step for Muse’s European expansion plans.

THE SOLUTION

SecureSlate, the fastest and most resource-efficient path to GDPR compliance

Dave began exploring compliance automation platforms and narrowed his search down to three options. He ultimately chose SecureSlate due to its specialized focus on GDPR and extensive experience working with growing companies in the event and entertainment industry. One of the deciding factors was SecureSlate’s familiarity with startups of a similar size — Dave knew that implementation speed and processes vary from company to company, so SecureSlate’s expertise in working with resource-constrained tech startups was a key deciding factor.

The automation-first approach of SecureSlate proved to be invaluable for Muse. They were able to connect SecureSlate to their systems using pre-built integrations, and with the help of their dedicated Compliance Advisor, they were able to customize the implementation for their specific data processing activities. They also appreciated SecureSlate’s integrated dashboard, which allowed the Muse team to track compliance progress and delegate tasks without pulling engineers away from critical development work.

Muse leveraged SecureSlate’s built-in GDPR training modules to quickly bring their team up to speed on compliance requirements. “Another reason why I enjoyed working with SecureSlate is that we’ve never had to implement GDPR before,” said Dave. “So when it came to training our team, I was able to rely on SecureSlate’s ready-made resources rather than creating materials from scratch.” SecureSlate’s familiarity with similar event technology platforms proved invaluable as they fully understood Muse’s tech stack, data flows, and how to best implement GDPR requirements with minimal disruption.

THE IMPACT

Accelerated GDPR compliance to fuel European expansion

After partnering with SecureSlate, Muse successfully achieved GDPR compliance readiness in early 2024 — significantly faster than their anticipated timeline. Dave especially credits Muse’s success to their dedicated Compliance Advisor and SecureSlate’s intuitive platform which guided the team throughout the implementation process and provided practical advice on best data privacy practices.

With SecureSlate, Dave now has clear visibility into Muse’s ongoing compliance status through automated monitoring and alerts for any potential issues — saving the engineering team valuable time from manual compliance checks. They’ve seen the tangible benefits of expediting their GDPR compliance by using SecureSlate’s platform and documentation to quickly address EU client questionnaires, reducing sales cycles and allowing them to expand confidently throughout Europe’s event ticketing market.

“We really felt supported by SecureSlate, not just on our compliance process, but also on establishing best practices for data privacy that aligned with our business goals.”

Dave, Founder at Muse