independent-artists
(15)
UnitedMasters: Keep the masters. Sell the moment.
UnitedMasters sells independent artists a route to streaming services, brand campaigns and faster royalties. The interesting part is what ownership buys - and what it still leaves you to do.
Steve Stoute Bet His Career on What the Music Business Couldn't Hear
He walked away from the record business to study advertising, then came back with a different proposition: artists should keep the work, know the audience and own the upside.
The Music PR Firm That Put Its Fee on the Line
TREND screens the artist before it sells the campaign, then combines hand-pitched press, vetted playlists and a two-person social team. The wager is simple: attention only counts when it still points back to the music.
Starlight PR Sells the Part of Music Fame Nobody Sees
For independent artists, the hardest problem is rarely making one more post. It is making every post, interview, playlist pitch and press mention tell the same story at the same moment.
Articore found a profit in the small print
The owner of Redbubble and TeePublic has returned to profit while sales keep falling. Its turnaround runs through cheaper fulfillment, shared operations and a bigger bill for some artists.
Peter Sinclair’s quiet revolution: give artists the check, then get out of the way
Peter Sinclair never pretended to have the golden ear. His sharper idea was that musicians deserved capital without a stranger rearranging their careers - a principle that became beatBread and outlived its founder.
Jon Baltz Built a Music Career in the Margins of the Play Button
Before creator revenue became a conference cliché, Jon Baltz was helping independent musicians collect the money hiding inside fan uploads. His 15-year path from college booking rooms to Symphonic is a lesson in making the unglamorous machinery matter.
Distro Nation Turned Other People’s YouTube Uploads Into an Exit
The tiny company behind the ‘Harlem Shake’ money trail survived an acquisition, an eight-year corporate chapter and a spinout. Fifteen years later, Symphonic bought the rights-management machine - and the lesson is more useful than the meme.
beatBread Wants Musicians to Take the Money - Without Giving Away the Music
The music industry has always known how to turn tomorrow's royalties into today's cash. beatBread's wager is that software, transparent terms and competing funders can let independent artists do it without signing away the steering wheel.
Tapped AI Tried to Be an AI Record Label. The Better Business Was Hiding in the Venue Spreadsheet
The New York startup began with a $50-a-month AI artist-services pitch, hit the cold-start wall of a two-sided marketplace, and rebuilt around a less glamorous asset: useful live-music data. Its most copyable idea is also its least theatrical - let one customer group improve the dataset for the next.
Duetti
Duetti is a New York-based music fintech that buys catalogs and royalty streams from independent artists, giving creators upfront cash for their recorded music and publishing rights without debt or recoupment. Founded in 2022 by former Tidal COO Lior Tibon and ex-Apple Music executive Christopher Nolte, the company pairs catalog financing with active distribution, marketing and playlist support, positioning itself as a catalog partner built specifically for the long tail of independent creators rather than major-label superstars.
Lior Tibon
Lior Tibon is the co-founder and CEO of Duetti, a New York-based music financing platform that lets independent artists and songwriters sell their catalogs, individual tracks, or fractions of them for upfront cash. Before Duetti, he spent more than seven years as COO of TIDAL, the artist-owned streaming service launched under JAY-Z, and started his career as an investment banker at Deutsche Bank in London. Duetti has raised over $623M to fund the independent music community, backed by The Raine Group, Flexpoint Ford, Nyca Partners, Viola Ventures and Roc Nation.
indify
indify is a New York music marketplace that connects emerging independent artists with the partners they need to build a career - funders, managers, marketers, lawyers and creatives - without a traditional record deal. Founded in 2015 by three childhood friends, it started as a data tool for spotting breakout talent early (it flagged Billie Eilish, Post Malone and Khalid before they were famous) and evolved into a platform where artists strike transparent, per-release deals, keep their masters, retain creative control, and keep at least 50% of profits after an investor is repaid.
Shav Garg
Shav Garg is the co-founder and CEO of indify, a New York music-tech company that uses a predictive algorithm to spot emerging artists before they break and connect them with investors, managers and partners on artist-friendly terms. Founded in 2015 in the basement of his family home with two childhood friends from Scarsdale, indify flagged Khalid, Billie Eilish and Post Malone early and has reshaped how independent musicians fund careers while keeping their masters. Garg is also a working singer-songwriter who records as prettyboyshav.
Minted
Minted is a San Francisco design marketplace that turns crowdsourced art from independent artists into holiday cards, wedding invitations, wall art, and home decor printed on demand. Founded in 2007 by Mariam Naficy, the company runs continuous design competitions where its community of 15,000+ artists submit work, customers vote, and winning designs are produced and sold worldwide.