Notes.fm, the music royalty collection platform co-founded by Tim Luckow, has raised USD $5 million.
The round, announced on Thursday (September 17), was funded almost entirely by artists, managers, executives, and strategic partners from across the music business. Notes did not name a lead investor.
Backers include Benny Blanco, Zach Bryan, Tainy, Blake Slatkin, Mt. Joy frontman Matt Quinn, and Bryan’s managers, Stefan Max and Danny Kang.
Also participating are WME Group Executive Chairman Ari Emanuel, Chord Music Partners co-founder Sam Hendel, and Julie Greenwald, the former Atlantic Music Group Chairman and CEO who launched record label 26.2 with Max Lousada in April.
Music companies in the round include Foundations, Mick Management, Twenty Ten Management, Triple 8, KMGMT, Good Boy, Mexican Summer, and Breakaway.
Notes says the money will fund “continued platform development and scaled marketing efforts” as it takes its offering to artists globally.
“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.
“Music is evolving quickly, and the finance systems around it need to evolve at a faster rate.”
Tim Luckow, Notes.fm
“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.”
Notes says it takes no percentage of the distribution and publishing royalties it collects, charging a subscription instead. Its musician plan costs USD $5 per month, and a free tier covers a limited catalog and a single royalty review.
Luckow co-founded indie artist distribution and services platform Stem alongside Milana Lewis and Jovin Cronin-Wilesmith, before the Los Angeles company raised a $4.5M seed round in 2016, then raised a USD $8 million Series A in 2017.
Stem was acquired by Concord in March 2025.
Notes.fm requires only a musician’s name and a list of songs before it begins reviewing streaming services, collection societies, and registries including The Mechanical Licensing Collective (The MLC) and SoundExchange.
It then identifies missing royalties, helps fix the underlying registration issues, and claims the money that results from those corrections, according to Notes.
The company says it has identified more than USD $10 million in previously unclaimed royalties across catalogs including those of James Blake, Zach Bryan, Mt. Joy, and girl in red.
Notes first announced that total when it came out of a year-long beta and launched publicly in October 2025, having by then reviewed the catalogs of more than 400 artists, covering songs with more than 50 billion streams.
Notes says the system it is trying to replace leaves more than USD $1 billion in royalties unclaimed by artists every year.
“Having spent our careers working with artists at every level, we’ve seen firsthand how much value gets lost to fragmented, unnecessarily complex systems,” added 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.
“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.”
Derek Davies, Notes.fm
“This raise gives us the resources to keep building the infrastructure and applications that we believe the next generation of artists deserves.”
Davies is also co-founder and co-CEO of Futures Music Group, the New York label collective that counts Notes.fm among its strategic investments.
Futures said in October 2024 that the platform had already found “seven figures” worth of royalties owed to its launch artists from historical releases.
The raise follows the debut of Releases, which folds distribution, publishing administration, and money management into a single release process, plus a tie-up with Stripe.
Notes built its financial accounts and payouts on Stripe Connect and Stripe Treasury this year.
In July, the company also launched Credits.fm, a free, open database that it says indexes more than 150 million song codes and credits.
Notes says that database is meant to help the industry organize and verify the data behind royalty payments and artist compensation “in the age of AI.”
Unclaimed money remains a live issue across the wider business. The MLC says it has distributed close to USD $4 billion to songwriters and publishers since 2021, and had its designation continued by the US Register of Copyrights in a decision published in June.
The MLC says its public database covers more than 54 million songs, and that it has enrolled nearly 90,000 members.
Notes.fm, which is headquartered in New York, says it is building a single system covering royalty discovery, payments infrastructure, and financial management for musicians.Music Business Worldwide
