Notes.fm Raises $5 Million to Unify Royalties, Publishing, and Distribution for Independent Artists

New funding from leading artists and music industry executives—including Zach Bryan, Benny Blanco, Tainy, Ari Emanuel, Julie Greenwald, Sam Hendel, and others—supports the next phase of growth as Notes.fm builds a new financial layer for the music economy

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NEW YORK, Sept. 17, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Notes.fm, the music royalty collection platform helping 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, on a mission to support independent artists with the best-in-class technology for distribution and publishing under one roof so they can have full control over their earnings and stop missing out on money that is rightfully theirs.

The round includes participation from a range of influential artists and music industry leaders from Benny Blanco, Zach Bryan and his managers Stefan Max and Danny Kang, Tainy, Blake Slatkin, and Mt. Joy frontman Matt Quinn, WME Group Executive Chairman Ari Emanuel, Chord Music founder Sam Hendel, longtime Atlantic Records chief and 26.2 founder Julie Greenwald, as well as 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.fm as the home for both distribution and royalty collection, making it easy for artists and their teams to take simultaneous ownership of their creative output and the income it generates. Notes is founded on the principle that every artist should receive all of their royalties. That's why they take 0% participation in distribution and publishing royalties, charging a flat monthly subscription fee instead. It's the same ethos 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.

This isn't new for Notes. Since launch, they've rolled out capabilities that allow artists and rights holders to more seamlessly manage their earnings, including integrated financial accounts designed to give users more flexibility in how they collect, store, and transfer, and earn on income. These updates are part of a broader effort to build a more complete financial layer for the modern music ecosystem.

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.

"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."

Notes has created an artist-friendly, automated process to simplify a notoriously complex and outdated system that has historically led to hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties going unclaimed by artists every year. Notes brings clarity to the complexity, requiring only a musician name and list of songs to start reviewing streaming services, collection societies, and registries like the MLC and SoundExchange. The platform not only identifies missing royalties, but it also helps an artist fix issues and directly claim the royalties that result from those corrections while ensuring future income flows correctly.

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 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.

By bringing together royalty discovery, payments infrastructure, and music-centric financial management into a single experience, Notes.fm is helping to create a new system that better supports artists as their careers and audiences grow.

About Notes.fm
Notes.fm is a music royalty collection platform built to help independent musicians, artists and music companies collect all of their royalties in one easy-to-use place. Founded by Stem co-founder Tim Luckow, Notes brings distribution, publishing, and financial tools under one roof, giving musicians and companies the technology to release music, verify song credits, manage their catalogs, and collect every royalty they're owed. Music Royalties, Simplified.

Learn more at www.notes.fm.

The Untold: Chelsey Northern ([email protected]), Chloé Snyder ([email protected]), Cory Councill ([email protected])

SOURCE Notes.fm