Music’s $1.5B Secret: This Startup Unlocks It!

Hustler Words – The intricate landscape of music rights and royalties has long been a labyrinth for artists, often leading to substantial amounts of unclaimed earnings due to fragmented data and complex payment structures. Navigating this opaque system while simultaneously fostering creative output is an arduous undertaking. However, a pioneering platform named Mogul has emerged as a beacon for creators, announcing it has successfully identified a staggering $1.5 billion in previously untracked royalties for artists since its inception just last year. This significant milestone coincides with the startup securing a fresh $5 million in funding, underscoring investor confidence in its innovative approach.

The latest capital injection was spearheaded by the Yamaha Music Innovations Fund, with notable participation from the Urban Innovation Fund, Mindset Ventures, and Fairway Capital Partners. Existing investors Amplify LA and Wonder Ventures also contributed to the round, bringing Mogul’s total funding to over $6.3 million to date. Founded by former SoundCloud head of creators Jeff Ponchick and ex-SoundCloud VP of engineering Joey Mason, Mogul is strategically leveraging this new capital to expand its lean six-person team and further enhance its robust offerings.

Andrew Kahn, managing partner at Yamaha Music Innovations Fund, lauded Mogul’s founding team for their deep industry credentials and engineering prowess, which he believes are crucial for developing products that genuinely empower artists. Kahn highlighted Mogul’s distinct competitive edge, stating, "We believe that Mogul has built the most comprehensive, first-party data pipeline that exists for residual income earners." He further emphasized that unlike many competitors with limited connectivity to payment entities, Mogul offers unparalleled accuracy and speed in royalty tracking.

Since its launch, Mogul’s product suite has undergone significant evolution. Initially providing users with cataloging recommendations, the platform now delivers actionable insights, including optimized data formats and cross-platform corrections for catalog metadata. Ponchick illustrated this with a practical example: "If your SoundExchange account is linked, we’ll say, hey, we see you distributed these songs through Distrokid to Spotify, half of them are not in your SoundExchange account." The tool can then prompt the user for missing information and even complete the necessary registrations, including a bulk registration feature for mass data input. On average, artists utilizing Mogul have witnessed a 20% uplift in their royalty revenues.

Further enhancing its value proposition, Mogul has rolled out a sophisticated catalog valuation tool. This feature provides artists with an estimated worth of their entire music catalog, encompassing both recording and publishing rights. The tool offers granular breakdowns by individual tracks and specific revenue streams like Spotify and Apple Music, aligning with Mogul’s core mission to help artists more effectively manage and monetize their intellectual property.

In a strategic shift, Mogul recently discontinued its free tier. Ponchick explained that while popular with emerging artists, the free model was unsustainable for providing the advanced automation tools that truly benefit creators. The decision was made to concentrate on delivering maximum value to artists who are serious about optimizing their earnings and careers, ensuring the platform’s long-term viability and impact.

Looking ahead, Mogul is also grappling with the burgeoning complexities introduced by AI-generated music. While performing rights organizations currently permit the registration of partially AI-created tracks, fully AI-generated compositions may face stricter scrutiny on various platforms. Kahn from Yamaha Music Innovations Fund underscored the challenges this presents, including "volume complexity, ownership ambiguity, and attribution disputes" in royalty tracking. He noted that the existing infrastructure was designed for human creators, and the high volume and probabilistic authorship of AI music could complicate the tracking, allocation, and defense of intellectual property claims. Despite the evolving regulatory landscape, Ponchick asserts that Mogul is well-positioned to track royalties for any type of musical creation.

Mogul operates in a dynamic sector with other players like Notes.fm and Claimity. The industry itself is undergoing structural changes, exemplified by the U.S. performing rights organization AllTrack, which launched a new division in 2024 to enable creators to collect both performance and mechanical royalties from a single source. As the digital music economy continues to expand and evolve, Mogul’s technology stands out as a critical tool for artists striving to reclaim their rightful earnings in an increasingly complex ecosystem.