For two decades, the music industry's answer to fan remixing was a form letter. A teenager slowed down a chorus, mashed two hits together, posted it to a feed - and somewhere a rights-management system flagged it, muted it, or took it down. The demand was obvious. The plumbing to pay for it was not. Hook, a New York company founded in 2023, is built around a single reversal of that logic: what if the remix paid the artist instead of provoking the lawyer?
Hook is an AI-driven social music app. It hands users a catalog of more than 20 million licensed recordings and a set of tools - genre and mood filters, tempo shifts, AI beat-matching, sound effects, and video editing - to build short clips of up to 30 seconds and share them across TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat and SoundCloud. The twist is not the technology. Plenty of apps can pitch-shift a track. The twist is that every song in Hook's library is cleared for remixing, so the people who made it can be paid when a fan reworks it.
Hook was built on a simple idea: fans want to express themselves with the music they love, and artists deserve to stay in control.
That framing - "artist-first, rights-owners-first," as founder Gaurav Sharma puts it - is doing a lot of work. It is the reason major labels and distributors have been willing to open their catalogs to a startup, and it is the pitch that drew a $10 million Series A led by Khosla Ventures in February 2026.
Pick a licensed song, apply AI filters that shift genre, mood or tempo, mash it with another track, and add visuals - all in a mobile-first creation flow.
Social-media users who want original-sounding audio for short-form video, plus the artists and labels who want to monetize and govern how their catalog is reused.
Fan remixing is everywhere and almost none of it is licensed properly. Hook formalizes it - authorization, control and payment where there used to be only takedowns.
Sharma frames the opportunity in historical terms. Streaming, he argues, did not fight the way listeners had started to consume music in the piracy era; it built a licensed structure around the behavior and rescued the industry's economics in the process. Hook wants to do the same for remixing.
Our platform is a bridge between shifting consumption trends and the music industry in the same way streaming platforms were for the digital music shift in the 2000s.
Most tools sit on one side of the rights line. Native platform features let you clip an existing sound but not transform it freely; unlicensed remix tools let you transform anything but leave the legal risk with the creator - and the artist unpaid. Hook's distinction is that the catalog is cleared up front, so transformation and compliance are not in tension.
| Capability | Native feed tools | Unlicensed remix apps | Hook |
|---|---|---|---|
| Deep genre / tempo remixing | Limited | Yes | Yes |
| Licensed catalog | Yes | No | Yes |
| Artists get paid for remixes | Partial | No | Yes |
| Rights holders keep control | Partial | No | Yes |
| Built for cross-platform sharing | Yes | Varies | Yes |
Comparison reflects Hook's public positioning; capability rows are illustrative, not a formal benchmark.
The core app to create, share and discover short-form remixes and mashups, with AI filters, beat-matching, sound effects and video editing.
20M+ licensed recordings and 1,200+ cleared artists - including Justin Bieber and Playboi Carti - through deals with 16 music companies.
Collaborative creation spaces where several users can contribute to a shared remix - remixing as a multiplayer activity.
Personalized discovery of trending hooks, top artists and creators, plus community challenges and giveaways.
Hook is a consumer social app built on licensed short-form remixing. It licenses recordings from labels, publishers and distributors, lets fans create authorized remixes, and channels revenue back to artists and rights holders - treating fan remix monetization as a new revenue stream rather than a copyright liability. Reported annual revenue remains early-stage (estimated ~$200K), consistent with a company that only launched publicly in 2026.
Founder and CEO Gaurav Sharma was previously Chief Operating Officer of JioSaavn, India's largest music streaming platform - a vantage point on how licensed structures scale around consumer behavior. Simmi Singh serves as Chief Operating Officer and Chief Product Officer. The company's edge is less a single algorithm than the combination of catalog licensing, rights-holder relationships and AI creation tools in one product.
The February 2026 Series A was led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from Point72 Ventures, Imaginary Ventures and Waverley Capital. What stands out is who else is on the list: working artists and music-industry figures, from Kygo's Palm Tree Crew and DJ KSHMR to Three Six Zero, Avex and The Raine Group.
Hook is solving a hard problem at the center of modern music: enabling remixing and social distribution in a way that works for rights holders at scale.
Major label content partner supplying licensed recordings for remixing.
Distribution and content partnership providing access to millions of licensed recordings.
Distribution partner adding to the cleared catalog.
Music-rights partner contributing catalog for authorized remixing.
Music company that is both a distribution partner and an investor.
Integrations with TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat and SoundCloud for distribution.
Gaurav Sharma, former JioSaavn COO, founds the company in New York to build a legal fan-remixing platform.
Hook raises early capital, including a $3.5M round, and partners with Downtown Music for licensed catalog access.
Hook launches publicly on iOS and closes a $10M Series A led by Khosla Ventures, with 20M+ licensed songs and 1,200+ cleared artists.
We are giving a way for users to remix their favourite songs while enabling artists and labels to get paid.Gaurav Sharma, Founder & CEO
Hook gives artists agency in how their fans interact with or express themselves with their music.Gaurav Sharma, Founder & CEO
Hook is an AI-powered social music app that lets fans legally remix and mash up licensed songs into short-form clips for social media, while keeping artists and rights holders in control.
Yes. Hook licenses recordings from labels, publishers and distributors - over 20 million songs and 1,200+ cleared artists - so remixes are authorized and rights holders get paid.
It was founded by CEO Gaurav Sharma, former COO of JioSaavn. Investors include Khosla Ventures (leading a $10M Series A), Point72 Ventures, Imaginary Ventures, Waverley Capital, and artists such as DJ KSHMR and Kygo's Palm Tree Crew.
Roughly $16 million to date, including a $10 million Series A led by Khosla Ventures announced in February 2026.
Up to 30-second remixes and mashups using AI genre and tempo filters, beat-matching and sound effects, plus video editing to create shareable content for TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat and SoundCloud.