Notes.fm has raised $5 million as the music-fintech startup expands from finding missing artist royalties into distributing new releases itself. The move puts Notes earlier in the life of a song, before incomplete credits, registrations or ownership information have a chance to turn into missing money.
Zach Bryan, Benny Blanco and Tainy are among the investors in the round, alongside producers, managers and executives from across the music business. No lead investor or valuation was disclosed.
Announced September 17th, the financing will support product development, marketing and international expansion. Notes is the latest company from Stem co-founder Tim Luckow, who is building a system that combines distribution, publishing administration, royalty recovery, credits and music-focused financial tools inside one account.
The expansion arrives with Notes Releases, which lets independent musicians distribute recordings to more than 50 platforms while connecting the songwriting, contributors and ownership information behind those releases. Rather than taking a percentage of distribution and publishing royalties collected through the service, Notes charges a subscription.
Zach Bryan and Benny Blanco Joined the Round
The $5 million round includes an unusually music-heavy investor list.
Bryan and his managers Stefan Max and Danny Kang participated alongside Blanco, Tainy, producer Blake Slatkin and Mt. Joy frontman Matt Quinn. WME Group Executive Chairman Ari Emanuel and former Atlantic Records chief Julie Greenwald are also among the backers, with additional investment coming from music-management and independent-label businesses.
Music Business Worldwide notes that the financing was funded almost entirely by artists, managers, executives and other strategic music-industry participants rather than a conventional lead venture investor.
That distinction is particularly relevant to what Notes sells. Its backers include people who work directly with the royalty, credit, distribution and financial systems the company is trying to pull together.
Co-founder Derek Davies made that connection in the company’s funding announcement, describing the round as largely backed by people with firsthand experience of the problems Notes is trying to solve.
Notes Releases Moves Directly Into Distribution
Royalty recovery was the original entry point. Notes Releases moves the company into the much larger and more competitive distribution business.
An independent artist can now enter a new release, attach songwriters and other contributors, establish ownership splits and send the recording to digital platforms through the same system used to manage royalty information.
Notes separates ownership into two pools: the sound recording and the underlying composition. That distinction is fundamental to music royalties because the person who owns a master recording and the people who wrote the song do not necessarily receive the same types of payments.
Paid musician accounts can distribute music to more than 50 platforms. The company’s distribution system also connects releases with credits, recording identifiers, publishing registration and royalty collection.
Independent musicians often use different services for those jobs. One company may deliver the recording to Spotify and Apple Music, another may administer publishing, while additional organizations collect mechanical, performance or neighboring-rights income.
Notes is trying to collapse more of that workflow into one place.
That makes its competition broader than a single distributor. Companies such as DistroKid, TuneCore and CD Baby operate in independent distribution, while publishing administrators and royalty-recovery businesses handle other pieces of the financial chain. Notes’ pitch is that the release itself should connect those pieces before money starts moving.
The Zero-Percent Royalty Model Is the Hook
Notes is entering that market with a straightforward economic promise: the company says it takes 0% of the distribution and publishing royalties it collects through its service.
Instead, musicians pay a flat subscription. Notes currently offers a free tier, while its Musician plan costs $5 per month or $50 annually. Company accounts begin at $100 per month, according to the current pricing.
The distinction does not mean releasing music is universally free of outside costs. Streaming platforms, collection organizations, taxes and other services operate under their own rules. Notes’ specific claim is that its own business model does not take a percentage of the distribution and publishing royalties it collects for subscribers.
For a catalog that begins earning substantially more money, a fixed subscription behaves differently from a percentage fee. The price of the Notes account does not automatically rise simply because royalty income does.
Smaller artists are part of the strategy too. A free account allows musicians to add up to 10 existing songs and receive one royalty review. Paying removes the catalog limit and adds ongoing reviews and new-release distribution.
The larger business opportunity comes from what happens after distribution. Once Notes has a recording, its contributors, ownership splits and publishing information connected correctly, the company can also help track where the resulting royalties should go.
Stripe Powers Notes’ Artist Payment Accounts
Getting music registered correctly only solves part of the problem. Eventually, the money has to reach someone.
Notes uses Stripe infrastructure for artist accounts and payouts. Users receiving royalties can enroll through Stripe Connect and link an external bank account or, when eligible, open a financial account connected to the service.
Funds associated with those accounts are held at Fifth Third Bank, Notes’ documentation states. Notes itself is not a bank or money transmitter; Stripe Payments Company provides the relevant money-transmission and account services, subject to eligibility and verification requirements.
The arrangement pushes Notes beyond simply displaying royalty totals on a dashboard. Luckow’s broader idea is to connect the data establishing who owns music with the financial infrastructure through which those earnings eventually move.
Royalty income can arrive from different organizations on different schedules, sometimes months after the underlying listening occurred. Connecting those payments becomes considerably harder when ownership information was incomplete at the beginning.
“Music is evolving quickly, and the finance systems around it need to evolve at a faster rate,” Luckow said in the company’s funding announcement.
Credits.fm Connects the Data Behind Royalties
One of Notes’ more distinctive projects is available without paying for the platform at all.
Launched in July, Credits.fm is a free, open database designed to connect music credits with the identifiers used across the recording and publishing businesses.
A recording can carry an ISRC. The composition underneath it may have an ISWC. Songwriters and publishers can be connected through IPI numbers. Credits.fm attempts to make those relationships easier to search in one public place while also indexing other music-industry identifiers.
The Credits.fm database contains tens of millions of recording and composition identifiers alongside musician profiles, with public search available without an account.
Notes says its system cross-checks information against sources including The Mechanical Licensing Collective, MusicBrainz, CISAC and ISNI.org. Its methodology describes a verification graph intended to connect a recording with the composition, writers, contributors and releases behind it.
Those identifiers can look like administrative clutter until one connection is missing.
If a recording cannot be reliably matched with the song underneath it, or a songwriter’s information is incomplete, the organizations responsible for paying different royalties may have trouble identifying where the money belongs. Credits.fm is designed to make those connections more visible.
Keeping the database open also gives Notes a role beyond its paid product. Accurate attribution is becoming increasingly important as music catalogs are searched and processed by streaming platforms, royalty organizations and automated systems at enormous scale.
Notes Says It Has Already Found $10 Million
Notes’ original business was built around finding money after those connections had already gone wrong.
Since its public launch, the company says it has identified more than $10 million in previously unclaimed royalties across artists and catalogs including James Blake, Zach Bryan, Mt. Joy and girl in red.
MBW traces the figure to Notes’ own reporting. At its October 2025 public launch, the company said it had reviewed more than 400 artist catalogs covering music with over 50 billion streams.
Those numbers are company-reported rather than independently audited, an important distinction when evaluating the scale of Notes’ royalty-recovery claims.
The underlying problem is nevertheless familiar across the music business. A recording can accumulate substantial streams while portions of the money associated with it remain unclaimed because a rights holder was never registered correctly or information does not match across different systems.
Notes says musicians can begin a catalog review with an artist name and song list. Its system then checks streaming services, collection societies and registries including The MLC and SoundExchange for gaps that may prevent royalties from reaching the correct owner.
When a problem is identified, Notes is designed to help correct the registration as well as recover money associated with it.
Releases changes the timing of that work. Instead of arriving months or years later to find an error, Notes can try to attach the recording, composition, credits and ownership information correctly before the first stream occurs.
The $5 Million Bet Is on Fewer Middlemen
Luckow has already built one company around the infrastructure behind independent music.
Before Notes, he co-founded Stem, which developed distribution and financial tools for artists and music businesses. Concord acquired Stem in March 2025, MBW notes.
His new company takes that experience in a broader direction. Distribution is part of Notes, but it now sits beside publishing administration, credits, royalty recovery and artist payment infrastructure rather than functioning as the entire product.
The $5 million round gives Notes more money to develop that system and expand internationally. Its larger test will be whether independent musicians actually want one platform occupying so many parts of a release’s financial life.
For artists who do, the proposition is unusually direct: release the recording, attach the people and ownership behind it, register the rights, collect the royalties and receive the money without giving Notes a percentage of those distribution and publishing earnings.
With Releases now live, Notes is trying to move royalty recovery upstream. Instead of finding missing money after a release has already gone wrong, it wants the ownership and payment information attached correctly before the first stream arrives.