As independent music reaches $160B in market value and commands nearly half of the global music industry, a critical disconnect persists: while indie creators now generate 47% of all recorded music revenue, catalog financing remains concentrated among the top 1% of artists. This gap forces emerging and mid-tier creators to choose between waiting years for streaming royalties that may never materialize at scale or signing away their rights through exploitative deals with hidden terms and recoupment structures. Duetti addresses this structural inequality by enabling independent artists earning as little as $2,000 annually to access immediate capital through transparent catalog sales – from single tracks to entire collections – without debt, recoupment, or creative control strings attached. The platform pairs this financial flexibility with active catalog management and marketing services including a 5M+ follower playlist network and customized growth programs, creating a model that accelerates rather than constrains artistic careers. Since launching in 2022, Duetti has partnered with over 1,100 music creators across 40+ countries and currently closes 80+ deals monthly, more than 2.5 times its rate just one year ago, demonstrating that when artists control the terms of their catalog monetization, they engage at unprecedented scale.
AlleyWatch sat down with Duetti Head of Finance Thomas Smyth to learn more about the business, its future plans, recent funding rounds, and much, much more…
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?$50M Series C equity investment by The Raine Group, alongside a $125M private securitization and a $25M credit facility increaseA total of $200M in new funding.
Tell us about the product or service that Duetti offers.Duetti is a music finance and services platform that partners with independent artists and creators. Founded in 2022 by CEO Lior Tibon and COO Christopher Nolte, Duetti provides capital and operational support to help creators monetize, manage, and grow their music catalogs.
What inspired the start of Duetti?Duetti exists to open up opportunities for independent music creators. For decades, meaningful catalog monetization and long-term financial leverage were reserved for the top 1%. We built Duetti to change that.
How is Duetti different?We work with a range of independent music creators – artists, songwriters, producers, and other collaborators – to acquire music rights, such as masters & publishing. We can acquire a full catalog or just a single track, and we can do this for assets ranging in value from $10,000 up to $10M. And we do this all with no strings attached – there’s no recoupment or payback. This is uncommon in the music industry, where catalog acquisitions are reserved for larger artists, require being signed to a label, or are “all or nothing” versus track by track. What also sets us apart is how we pair funding with personalized marketing, and catalog management services
What market does Duetti target and how big is it?Duetti works with independent music creators – artists, songwriters, and other collaborators – and can work with artists that are making $2,000 a year and up from streaming income. While we focus on independent artists, we can also work with artists that are signed to labels as well depending on their rights ownership. This allows us to address a broad range of independent music creators.
What’s your business model?
Duetti acquires music rights – masters, publishing, or royalty streams – from independent artists + creators. After we acquire the assets, we actively manage and market them to maximize value for our artist partners and investors. We view it as a win-win for Duetti and the music creators we work with – they get money for their music, we acquire an asset we feel strongly about, and we then use our team’s technology and expertise to grow the value of track and reach new audiences, giving the artist partner access to a new fans and breathes new life into a catalog song.
How are you preparing for a potential economic slowdown?One of the great things about music rights as an asset class is that it has been uncorrelated to broader market conditions in previous economic downturns. We view music rights as almost utility-like in nature in that people will continue to maintain music subscriptions like they will continue to pay their power or internet bill. That’s not to say that an economic slowdown would not have other impacts on our business – we are constantly running downside scenarios in our corporate planning and monitoring investment levels to ensure we are taking the right level of risk in various market conditions.
What was the funding process like?The process was focused and highly relationship-driven. We spent time with a small group of investors who already understood the nuances of investing in music businesses and were aligned with our long-term approach, which made diligence efficient and constructive.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?Educating investors on the nuances of music rights and cash flow durability for our market segment took the most amount of time and effort. We were selective about partners, prioritizing investment track record in the space and belief in our vision over someone that can cut a check.
Educating investors on the nuances of music rights and cash flow durability for our market segment took the most amount of time and effort. We were selective about partners, prioritizing investment track record in the space and belief in our vision over someone that can cut a check.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?Our tech-driven underwriting, deep operational expertise, and sophisticated capital structure resonated strongly. Investors also valued our focus on the middle market, where we see more opportunity to continue growing as our platform evolves.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?Deploying capital into high-quality acquisitions is always a top priority for us – specifically, we are scaling our publishing rights acquisitions, growing the sourcing team, expanding internationally to double down on our successes to date, and investing in other parts of the business to scale.
What advice can you offer companies in New York that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
Focus relentlessly on the fundamentals: cash flow visibility, cost discipline, and operational execution. Strong businesses can create momentum even without new capital by proving durability and execution.
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?Continuing to build a best-in-class platform for music rights acquisition and management.
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