Indie Spotlight: Tone simplifies royalty processing

Tone is an innovative company that strives to get artists and label paid in a straightforward and streamlined way.

from A2IM

Music has always been a catalyst for innovation, driving the culture of sound, style, streaming, and social media. It makes no sense that, when it comes to getting paid for music, the industry is decades out of date. Tone is here to fix this problem. 

Tone makes royalty processing simple for modern record labels. Tone ingests all sales and cost data, calculates royalties accurately and quickly, and enables one-click payments for entire rosters. Labels can uncover actionable business insights via Tone’s dashboards. Artists can login to their own portal to understand and manage their finances. 

Shai Goodman, who was a Tone user at 3LAU’s record label Blume, explains what working with royalties was like before the platform: “We would get the statement and then do the rest ourselves,” she says. “We would email X person who wrote on X track and say, ‘Here’s what we owe you. Please send us an invoice and we’ll pay it.’ We did that twice a year and it definitely took a long time. Many hours in Google spreadsheets, making sure everything was right.” 

For an independent label with a three-person staff, it was a challenge. “To pay people on time and accurately, we needed an easier, more streamlined way to do our royalties,” says Shai.

And Tone isn’t just about labels – its mission is to modernize royalties for everyone who loves music, which means artists, too. Artists receive statements that are mobile-friendly and easy to understand. And the dashboard shows all recipients—artists, songwriters, producers, and everyone else—how their work is performing across time and across platforms, so they can make better choices for their own careers.

Tone is setting a new standard for financial clarity and efficiency in the music business. By simplifying the royalty process and fostering stronger relationships between labels and artists, Tone ensures that everyone who works in music understands their worth. Artists want to share their music with the world, and Tone believes they should get paid fairly to do it. Working together, we can all make that happen.