He taught a piece of software to hear a hit before the radio did - then he gave the artists their masters back.
The Operator
Most music executives wait for the phone to ring. Shav Garg wrote code that rings first. As co-founder and CEO of indify, he runs a New York company built on a single, slightly heretical idea: that the fans clicking play on a teenager's bedroom demo know more about who deserves a deal than any room full of A&R veterans. "Data is the fans who are voting for whom they relate to," he likes to say. "That's the democracy in the music industry."
Today indify is two things stitched together. First, a predictive engine that scrapes signals off YouTube, SoundCloud, Spotify, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook to flag artists on the verge of breaking. Second, a marketplace where those artists meet investors, managers, lawyers and marketers - and, crucially, sign deals on terms that would make a traditional label squirm. Artists keep their masters. Artists keep creative control. Artists keep at least half of the money after the investment is paid back. Garg built indify's standard contract down to four plain terms so a 19-year-old can read it without a lawyer and still understand exactly what they are agreeing to.
The thesis underneath all of it is almost stubbornly simple. Garg believes the streaming era turned musicians into small businesses, and that the old industry never updated its respect to match. "Artists are expected to do so much more for themselves, so in a way, they are becoming their own CEOs," he has said. "Artists still are not being respected as business owners in the economics you see at traditional record labels." indify is his attempt to fix the economics, not the artist.
What makes him a credible messenger is that he is on both sides of the glass. Garg is not only the CEO who reads the dashboards; he is also a working singer-songwriter who records and releases indie-pop under the handle prettyboyshav, with roughly six million streams to his name. He has felt the wall he is trying to knock down. That detail - the founder who still cuts his own tracks - is the whole story in miniature.
"When I saw that artists weren't being discovered based on the merit of their work but on who they knew, that felt so wrong."Shav Garg
Origin
Garg met co-founder Connor Lawrence in fourth grade, playing on a championship Little League team in Scarsdale. Lawrence's pre-K classmate Matt Pavia would become indify's CTO. The founding team knew each other before they knew what a cap table was.
As a teenager Garg dreamed of making music, then ran into a wall: the industry seemed to run on connections, not merit. That frustration - being good but unseen - became the problem statement he never stopped circling.
At Colgate he pitched a predictive algorithm through the Thought Into Action incubator, won the 2015 Entrepreneur Weekend competition and $25,000, and started indify in the basement of his family home.
The Receipts
The Deal
No catalog grab. The work stays with the person who made it. Investors buy into the upside of specific songs, not the artist's identity.
After an investment is recouped, the artist keeps at least half of the profits. indify takes a 15% slice of the investor's share - not the artist's.
Money funds the vision; it does not get to rewrite it. The artist remains the decision-maker on the art itself.
In His Words
"Artists are expected to do so much more for themselves, so in a way, they are becoming their own CEOs."
"Often you see that it's not that the best partners and the best teams are working with the best artists, it's that the people who reached out first are."
"Artists still are not being respected as business owners in the economics you see at traditional record labels."
"Data is the fans who are voting for whom they relate to - that's the democracy in the music industry."
The Other Side Of The Glass
Garg does not just analyze artists; he is one. Under the name prettyboyshav, he writes and releases indie-pop that has gathered around six million streams. It is not a vanity hobby bolted onto a startup bio - it is the reason indify's rules read the way they do. He has stood where his users stand, hoping a song finds its people, and that lived knowledge is baked into every contract clause.
The Arc
Interns at Warner Music Group, the streaming service Saavn, and Colgate's recording studio. Watches A&R run on gut and handshakes - and starts wondering if data could do it better.
Co-founds indify with childhood friends Connor Lawrence and Matt Pavia. Wins Colgate's Entrepreneur Weekend and a $25,000 prize. Graduates with a BA in economics.
The discovery algorithm flags Khalid, Post Malone and a young Billie Eilish before their breakthroughs.
indify's founders land on Rolling Stone's Future 25. Investors include Alexis Ohanian, Kerry Trainor, Anthony Saleh and Courtney Stewart.
Billboard profiles indify as an angel-investing marketplace for DIY artists. Garg speaks at Mondo NYC. The model - artists as founders - keeps spreading.
Watch
Garg on helping independent artists build world-class teams, the data behind discovery, and why he treats musicians like founders.
The Rolodex