Over $1 Billion in Music Royalties Goes Unclaimed Every Year

The problem most artists do not know they have

Every time your music is streamed, broadcast, synced to a video, or played in a public space, royalties are generated. In theory, those royalties flow through various organisations and registries back to you. In practice, the system is fragmented enough that a significant portion of that money never arrives. Notes.fm says the system it is trying to replace leaves more than $1 billion in royalties unclaimed by artists every year.

The reasons are mundane but costly: a song registered under a slightly different title in one territory, a missing songwriter credit, a distributor and a rights registry that do not share data cleanly. Artists can generate royalties across numerous services, societies, and registries while still missing money because the systems responsible for tracking those earnings remain fragmented.

What Notes.fm does

Notes.fm has built technology that reviews an artist's catalog across streaming services, collection societies, and registries including the Mechanical Licensing Collective and SoundExchange. Users can begin the process with only an artist name and song list. The platform then identifies potential royalty gaps, helps correct the underlying data or registration problems, and assists artists in directly claiming money generated by those corrections. It also works to ensure future payments flow properly once the issues have been resolved.

Service offerings include Credits, a free music credits database with more than 150 million song codes and credits that rights owners can use to organise and verify royalty data and correct registration issues; Releases, which combines music distribution, publishing administration, and financial management in one workflow for a subscription fee of around $5 a month; and financial accounts, which partner with payment processor Stripe to help artists collect and manage their money.

The platform takes 0% participation in distribution and publishing royalties, charging a flat monthly subscription fee instead.

How much has it found so far

Notes.fm says it has already identified more than $10 million in previously unclaimed royalties since its public launch last year. Artist catalogs where money was found include those of James Blake, Zach Bryan, Mt. Joy, and Girl in Red.

The $5 million raise

Notes.fm has raised $5 million from a group of prominent artists, music executives, managers, and strategic investors as the music royalty technology company expands a platform designed to help independent artists identify, collect, and manage all of the money they are owed. The financing includes participation from 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 Julie Greenwald.

Why this matters for independent artists

The artists who lose the most to unclaimed royalties are typically the ones without managers, lawyers, or label teams whose job it is to chase this money. For independent artists releasing music across multiple territories and platforms, the number of places a royalty can get lost is genuinely large. A tool that automates the search and does not take a cut of what it finds is a meaningful shift in who can afford to claim what they are owed.