Notes.fm Raises $5 Million Funded by Artists & Industry Leaders, Ari Emanuel, Benny Blanco, Zach Bryan, More

Photo Credit: Notes.fm

Music royalty collection platform Notes.fm raises $5 million from leading artists, managers, executives, and strategic partners across the industry.

Notes.fm, the platform for collecting music royalties that helps musicians and music companies identify and collect 100% of their royalties, announces it has raised $5 million from leading artists, managers, executives, and strategic partners across the music industry.

Notes is the latest venture from Stem co-founder Tim Luckow, who aims to empower independent artists by providing them with top-notch technology for distribution and publishing, all in one place, enabling them to take full control of their earnings and prevent the loss of rightful income.

The round includes participation from a range of influential artists and music industry leaders, including Benny Blanco; Zach Bryan and his managers Stefan Max and Danny Kang; Tainy; Blake Slatkin; Mt. Joy frontman Matt Quinn; WME Group Executive Chairman Ari Emanuel; Chord Music founder Sam Hendel; and longtime Atlantic Records chief and 26.2 founder Julie Greenwald. The round also includes participation from many of the industry’s leading companies, including Foundations, Mick Management, Twenty Ten Management, Triple 8, KMGMT, Good Boy, Mexican Summer, and Breakaway.

The funding will support continued platform development and scaled marketing efforts as Notes expands its offering to artists globally.

Notes recently debuted a new feature, “Releases,” and unveiled its new partnership with Stripe to streamline distribution, publishing admin, and money management into one simplified release flow for musicians. This allows artists to use Notes as the home base for both distribution and royalty collection, making it easy for musicians and their teams to take simultaneous ownership of their creative output and the income it generates.

Prior to Releases, Notes also announced Credits.fm, a free and open music credits database indexing more than 150 million song codes and credits to help the music industry organize, verify, and connect the data powering royalties and artist compensation in the age of AI.

The platform is founded on the principle that every artist should receive all of their royalties. To that end, they take 0% participation in distribution and publishing royalties, charging a flat monthly subscription fee instead. The same ethos is behind their catalog royalty review technology, which helps rights owners identify missing royalties across their catalog and fix the issues so they can claim all of the royalties they’ve earned while they can.

“Music is evolving quickly, and the finance systems around it need to evolve at a faster rate,” said Tim Luckow, CEO and co-founder of Notes.fm. “Between all of the actions required to properly release, credit, and collect on music, there are a lot of places where money falls through the cracks. We built Notes to bring all of that into one platform—so artists can release music and collect every royalty from day one and recover what’s historically been missed.”

“Having spent our careers working with artists at every level, we’ve seen firsthand how much value gets lost to fragmented, unnecessarily complex systems,” adds co-founder Derek Davies. “The response to Notes from the music community has been incredibly meaningful, and we’re proud to announce a raise funded almost exclusively by artists, managers, and music industry strategics who have a native understanding of these issues firsthand. This raise gives us the resources to keep building the infrastructure and applications that we believe the next generation of artists deserves.”

Following its public launch last year, Notes has already demonstrated strong early traction, identifying more than $10 million in previously unclaimed royalties across a broad range of artists and catalogs, including James Blake, Zach Bryan, Mt. Joy, Girl In Red, and many more. The platform continues to grow across both emerging and established artists, reflecting a shared demand for greater clarity and access in how music earnings are tracked and distributed.