Key Takeaways
- Mogul, founded by former SoundCloud executives Jeff Ponchick and Joey Mason, has tracked $1.5 billion in music royalties for artists and rights holders since launching last year.
- The startup raised $5 million in fresh funding led by the Yamaha Music Innovations Fund, bringing its total capital raised to over $6.3 million.
- Users report an average 20% bump in royalty revenues after using Mogul’s platform to identify and correct missing catalog data across collection societies and streaming platforms.
- The company currently operates with a 6-person team and plans to expand its data engineering and rights operations staff with the new funding.
Quick Recap
Mogul, a music-fintech platform that helps artists track, recover, and value their royalty income, announced on Tuesday that it has tracked $1.5 billion in lost or misdirected royalties since its launch last year.
Alongside this milestone, the startup disclosed a $5 million funding round led by the Yamaha Music Innovations Fund, with participation from Urban Innovation Fund, Mindset Ventures, Fairway Capital Partners, and existing backers Amplify LA and Wonder Ventures.
Mogul says it has tracked $1.5B in music royalties, raised $5M in funding https://t.co/LdKxC7FfRe
— TechCrunch (@TechCrunch) February 24, 2026
How Mogul’s Data Layer Is Fixing the Royalty Puzzle?
Mogul’s core value proposition lies in its first-party data pipeline. The platform connects to distributors, streaming services, performing rights organizations (PROs), and collection societies to flag gaps in an artist’s catalog metadata and, in many cases, automatically submits corrections on their behalf.
Andrew Kahn, managing partner at Yamaha Music Innovations Fund, described it as “the most comprehensive, first-party data pipeline that exists for residual income earners,” noting that most competitors claim robust coverage but have limited connectivity to actual payers.
A common use case involves SoundExchange, which collects digital performance royalties from outlets like SiriusXM. If an artist distributes tracks via DistroKid to Spotify but those recordings are not properly registered with SoundExchange, Mogul spots the mismatch, requests missing details from the user, and bulk-registers the repertoire to capture future payouts.
The platform has also rolled out a catalog valuation tool that estimates an artist’s catalog worth across recording and publishing, broken down by individual tracks and revenue sources like Spotify and Apple Music. To sharpen its focus, Mogul retired its free tier.
According to CEO Jeff Ponchick, the free tier attracted early-career musicians who did not earn enough royalties to benefit from automation tools, making it unsustainable. The business model now centers on a paid subscription justified by measurable ROI: if the platform unlocks missed royalties, the fee pays for itself.
Growing Royalty Recovery Market
The music industry’s royalty infrastructure remains notoriously fragmented. Artists must navigate performance royalties (via ASCAP, BMI, SESAC), mechanical royalties (administered by The MLC for streaming in the U.S.), and digital performance royalties for recordings (via SoundExchange), each dependent on accurate identifiers like ISRCs and ISWCs. Paris-based startup Claimy estimates that roughly 30% of music royalties fail to reach their intended recipients annually, translating to billions of dollars in lost income.
The rise of AI-generated music adds another layer of complexity. Yamaha’s Kahn warned that AI music will bring “volume complexity, ownership ambiguity, and attribution disputes” to royalty tracking, as the current infrastructure was built for a human creator ecosystem. Mogul says it is well-positioned to track royalties for any kind of tracks but is currently watching how the regulatory landscape develops.
Structurally, the market is also shifting. The U.S. performing rights organization AllTrack launched a new division in 2024 allowing creators to collect performance and mechanical royalties from one place, signaling a broader push toward consolidation and simplification.
Competitive Landscape
| Feature / Metric | Mogul | Notes.fm | Claimy |
| Founded by | Jeff Ponchick & Joey Mason (ex-SoundCloud) | Tim Luckow (Stem co-founder) | Pierre-Alban Mulliez |
| Total Funding | ~$6.3M | Not publicly disclosed | ~$1.8M (EUR 1.5M) |
| Royalties Tracked / Identified | $1.5B tracked | $10M+ in missing royalties identified (beta) | EUR 6M (~$7M) in rights under management |
| Key Investor(s) | Yamaha Music Innovations Fund, Urban Innovation Fund | Not publicly disclosed | Undisclosed music tech investors |
| Primary Focus | Full catalog tracking, recovery, and valuation (U.S.-centric) | Black box royalty recovery via automated scanning | AI-powered auditing of publishing royalties (France & UK) |
| Pricing Model | Paid subscription (free tier retired) | Subscription starting at $5/month, no royalty cut | Not publicly detailed |
| Team Size | 6 employees | Small founding team | Early-stage startup |
| Notable Users | Besomorph, Attack Attack!, Drama B | Mt. Joy, James Blake, Girl in Red | Celine Dion’s team |
Mogul leads in the sheer scale of royalties tracked ($1.5B) and its end-to-end approach covering both recording and publishing royalties with automated corrections. Notes.fm, however, has attracted higher-profile artist names during its beta and differentiates with a low $5/month entry price and a no-commission model. Claimy, operating primarily in Europe, brings a unique AI-driven auditing angle that could prove valuable as cross-border royalty collection remains a major challenge for the industry.
Bayelsa Watch’s Takeaway
I think this is a big deal for independent artists. In my experience covering music-fintech, the royalty tracking space has long been underserved by technology, with artists losing substantial income simply because metadata was wrong in a database somewhere. Mogul crossing the $1.5 billion tracking milestone in roughly a year tells me there is an enormous amount of money sitting in the cracks of the music industry’s outdated infrastructure.
