Independent artists and labels have more power than ever—but with that comes more complexity. Deals are layered, payouts are slow, and that “50/50 net profit” deal often hides messy math that leaves artists confused and underpaid.
Our Co-founder, Milana Lewis, has spent her career at the intersection of music, finance, and technology. In this conversation with Mauricio Ruiz on his podcast The Manager’s Playbook, she breaks down the root causes of music royalty chaos and offers tangible ways for artists and labels to take control.
4 Ways to Cut Through the Music Royalty Chaos
1. Autonomy beats “Independence”
Being an “independent” artist doesn’t have to mean you’re on a solo mission anymore. True independence today is autonomy: the ability to choose your partners and move on your own terms. But autonomy requires infrastructure, legal, financial, and operational systems that ensure your deals and payouts match your intentions.
Artists today can upload a track to SoundCloud or TikTok and feel like an “independent,” but when it comes to getting music on Spotify, negotiating contracts, or tracking payments across dozens of collaborators, they quickly run into walls. Even managers at music labels struggle to piece together spreadsheets, bank statements, and emails just to answer the most basic questions: Who owns what? When do they get paid?
Without infrastructure, autonomy collapses. And for too long, independents have been asked to operate without infrastructure.
Here’s how Tone helps independent labels & artists build infrastructure for their music business:
- Revenue Tracking: See every income source in one dashboard instead of chasing down sales data when royalties are due.
- On-Demand Royalty Runs: Close periods on your schedule, run statements when you need them, and revise without delays.
- Payee Dashboards: Artists, producers, managers, and collaborators can all have dedicated dashboards so everyone can see behind the curtain.
2. Delivery ≠ Distribution
For decades, artists were told that “getting your music out there” was the finish line. But today, music delivery does not equal music distribution. In fact, it’s closer to the starting line.
So delivery is just getting your music out there. Literally the act of delivering your music from your computer to the service that's going to enable fans to stream it all over the world. That is delivery of music. They are just pipes. They get your music to the services, they package it up, and they get it out there.”
The problem today? Too many artists and teams still confuse one for the other. Delivery is a button click. Distribution is a business model. Distribution determines whether your music actually shows up on the playlists and platforms that matter, how data about your catalog flows back into your deal terms, and even whether your team is in a position to negotiate.
If you treat delivery as distribution, you’re banking on organic discovery. If you understand distribution as strategy, you’re building equity.
Here’s how Tone helps independent labels & artists negotiate better distribution deals:
Contracts Hub: With Tone, contracts aren’t siloed PDFs. They serve as a bridge between your catalog and revenue, giving you a clear view of how every release flows through connected contracts.
Contract Simulator: Simulate how a distribution deal impacts your bottom line before you sign.
Invite Your Team: Give everyone you want involved in the deal access and insights–invite your lawyer, finance team, business managers and anyone else you want to weigh in.
3. Beware of the “Net Profit” Illusion
That 50/50 net profit deal you’ve been pitched? It’s rarely an even split. Costs, fees, and deductions usually come off the top, and then comes recoupment. On paper it looks great, but in practice it’s anything but.
For labels, that creates tension with artists who expect transparency but only see headline numbers. For artists, it means a big advance may feel like a win…until the hidden math kicks in.
Majors can afford to take this approach because they have scale and leverage. Independent labels and artists don’t. That’s why clarity in deal terms matters—so you can avoid getting locked into deals that look fair but eat away your margins.
Here’s how Tone helps independents make decisions at a major level:
- Contract Simulator: Pressure-test deal terms like escalations, deductions, and participation rates before you sign. Model how costs and fees impact payouts in real-world scenarios, instead of guessing and signing on vibes.
- Revenue Tracking: See costs and income from distributors, PROs, and DSPs side-by-side and easily see if inflows match deal expectations.
- Clear Statements & Dashboards: Tone turns messy spreadsheets into clean, shareable dashboards. Artists, producers, managers, and labels all see the same numbers—so there’s less confusion, fewer disputes, and more confidence.
4. Future-Proof Your Royalties
Music royalties are messy because most artists and labels don’t actually know what they own or when they’re getting paid.
And this problem is only getting bigger. As the industry shifts toward participatory music—personalization, AI-generated stems, and micro-uses across platforms—the number of royalty transactions will skyrocket. If your contracts, metadata, and payments aren’t structured cleanly, you’re already behind.
Look at how remixes and collaborations are handled today. One track can have a dozen contributors across writers, producers, and featured artists—each owed a different share. Multiply that by multiple versions of the same song surfacing on TikTok, YouTube Shorts, or AI covers, and suddenly “royalty chaos” gets real.
Here’s How Tone Helps:
- Programmable Contracts: Link your deal terms to your catalog, so you can clearly see every project associated with an artist.
- Metadata Validation: Keep your data in one place–Tone flags missing data and errors before they spiral into missing payments.
Ready to turn music royalty chaos into clarity?
“We realized that if we wanted to solve the problem of people getting paid more accurately, more clearly, and more consistently, we needed a whole different product… It needs to be its own product that can work across all these different companies, across all these distribution companies, across all these different labels—because you’re an artist. You need to pick the best partner for every project.”
That’s why Tone exists: to give artists and independent labels the same infrastructure and clarity that majors have spent decades building. Unlike legacy systems or tied-to-distribution accounting tools, Tone was designed to work across all your projects, all your partners, and all your deals.
The truth is, independence in music doesn’t mean isolation—it means autonomy. And autonomy requires infrastructure. Tone is that infrastructure.