The music industry runs on rights, royalties, and relationships. The software underneath it needs to handle licensing complexity, catalog scale, and financial accuracy that generic platforms weren't built for.
We build music technology software: streaming platforms with catalog management and rights enforcement, royalty calculation systems with per-stream accuracy, distribution pipelines to DSPs, and artist and label portals with real-time reporting.
Streaming platform architecture built for catalog scale and territory licensing
Rights and royalty management with accurate per-stream calculation
Digital distribution infrastructure for multi-DSP delivery
Artist and label portals with real-time reporting
The problem
Sound familiar?
Running a streaming platform that can't handle catalog scale or licensing complexity?
Royalty reporting that still runs on spreadsheets and takes weeks to reconcile?
Short answer
RaftLabs builds custom music technology software for labels, distributors, and streaming platforms: catalog and rights management, digital distribution pipelines to DSPs, royalty calculation and reporting, and artist and label portals. A first module launches as a working v1 in 10 to 14 weeks, then grows into a full platform.
Trusted by
Music tech software built for the actual complexity of the industry
Generic software platforms are built for average use cases. Music businesses aren't average. Licensing rules change by territory. Royalty splits differ by release, by deal, and by revenue type. Catalog metadata is messy and incomplete. A platform built for a media company or a SaaS business will bend until it breaks when you apply music industry rules to it.
Custom music technology software is scoped around your specific rights structure, your catalog, your deal types, and your distribution requirements. It handles the edge cases that break generic platforms because it was designed knowing those edge cases exist.
01 Diagnosis
Where music tech usually breaks
01
Problem
Endless spreadsheets
Solution
It's time to say goodbye to endless spreadsheets, and to undo the chaos of royalty accounting. Manual royalty reconciliation from multiple DSP reports in different formats, applied to deal terms stored in a separate spreadsheet, produces statements that take weeks and contain errors that rights holders can detect and dispute. Filtering a sales statement by the artist and using formulas to apply splits is extremely time-consuming. As streaming sites send over larger and larger data files, the risk of human error goes up. A royalty management system that ingests DSP data, applies your specific deal terms, and generates statements automatically reduces the process from weeks to hours. It also produces a calculation audit trail that's defensible. The outcome is statements your rights holders can verify.
02
Problem
Labels don't always know what catalogs they own
Solution
An industry auditor put it bluntly: labels don't always know what catalogs they own, especially after buying smaller labels, and the original paper contracts aren't always available to determine royalties. A royalty statement is like an Excel worksheet where there might be a formula that comes up with the number. Worse, they don't pay on 100% of the royalty rate. They pay on 80%. General media streaming infrastructure doesn't implement per-territory rights enforcement at the stream level. For music, a track licensed in the US but not in Germany must not play for a German listener. That check must happen at playback time, every time. The outcome is rights you can prove.
03
Problem
The money exists, the streams happened, nobody gets paid
Solution
The money exists, the streams happened, the royalties were collected, but the industry does not know who should be paid. The root cause is broken metadata: a single typo can strand royalties for years. Each DSP has its own metadata format requirements: ISRC codes, genre taxonomies, artwork specifications, release date rules. A distribution pipeline that doesn't validate against these requirements before delivery produces rejections and delays that push release dates back. A distribution platform with per-DSP validation built in catches metadata errors before submission rather than days after. The outcome is royalties that reach the right people.
04
Problem
Having to pay more money to receive money that rightfully belongs to creators
Solution
Keep 100% of your royalties, but only if you pay an annual fee. Miss a payment? Your tracks vanish, and so do your earnings. Having to pay more money to receive money that rightfully belongs to creators just doesn't seem right. When artists wait a month for a PDF statement to understand how their release is performing, they can't make decisions about promotion, social content, or release timing while the window is still open. An artist portal with real-time streaming data from connected DSPs gives artists the numbers while they can still act on them. The outcome is artists who can see what they earned.
02 What we ship
Music tech we build
01
Music streaming platform development
We build custom streaming platforms that handle catalog ingestion, audio delivery, licensing enforcement, playlist logic, and subscription billing. The architecture is designed for catalog scale: tens of thousands to millions of tracks, with rights rules applied per stream and per territory. Whether you need a white-label consumer product, a B2B sync licensing portal, or a private catalog streaming tool, the platform is built around your rights model, not retrofitted from a generic video platform. The outcome is streaming built around your rights model.
02
Digital music distribution software
We build distribution platforms that deliver releases to DSPs at scale: Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Tidal, and other major stores, with metadata management, ISRC and UPC handling, release scheduling, and territory controls. Revenue reports from each store come back in different formats. We build the aggregation layer that normalizes all of it into one consistent report your team can act on. The outcome is one consistent report from every store.
03
Royalty and rights management
Royalty calculations in music aren't simple. Master royalties, publishing royalties, neighboring rights, sync fees, and mechanical royalties all have different rules. We build systems that ingest usage data, apply your specific deal terms and royalty splits, and generate statements your rights holders can verify. The calculation logic is transparent and auditable, not locked in a black box. The outcome is statements that survive an audit.
04
Artist management software
We build artist management portals where labels and managers track releases, royalty statements, advances, recoupment positions, and deal terms in one place. Artists get a self-service view of their earnings and release status. Labels get reporting across their roster without pulling data from five different systems. The access model is role-based so artists see what they need and nothing they shouldn't. The outcome is one place for the whole roster.
05
Music label management tools
Label management software needs to connect A&R tracking, release scheduling, contract management, royalty accounting, and financial reporting. We build label platforms that bring these together without forcing your team to work in a tool designed for a different kind of media company. The system is built around your catalog structure, your deal types, and your reporting requirements. The outcome is a label run from one system.
06
Music analytics and reporting
Streaming data arrives fragmented, delayed, and in formats that differ by platform. We build analytics layers that ingest data from all your sources, normalize it, and surface the reporting your team needs: track performance by territory, release trend analysis, royalty revenue by rights holder, and distribution efficiency metrics. The data is yours, in one place, in a format you can use. The outcome is data you can actually use.
03 Buy, build, or wait
The music tech decision is usually about the aggregator: what it takes, what it keeps, and what it hides.
Stay on the aggregator
DistroKid, TuneCore
When distribution is the job and the fees stay honest.
Build custom
When you pay to receive your own money
Annual fees to keep your tracks live, add-ons for your own earnings. Owned distribution has no ransom.
When the statements are chaos
Endless spreadsheets, formulas nobody can decode, weeks per statement cycle. Build the engine that applies your deal terms.
When nobody knows what you own
Catalogs bought and merged, paper contracts missing. Build the rights record first.
Bottom line
Stay on the aggregator while the fees stay honest. Build when the aggregator taxes your earnings or your statements are chaos.
04 How we work
How we work with music technology clients
01
Discovery
We review your deal types, royalty structures, catalog scale, and distribution requirements. We identify the specific calculation edge cases and metadata standards that apply to your operation before we commit to an architecture or a price. The risk this retires: the deal term the spreadsheet never encoded.
02
Architecture
We design the royalty calculation engine, data ingestion pipeline, and rights enforcement logic around your specific deal terms and catalog structure. The data model is documented before development starts so your team can validate it against known statement outputs. The risk this retires: the split the engine gets wrong.
03
Build
We build the calculation engine first and validate it against real historical data: known inputs producing known outputs. Then we build the reporting layer on top. DSP integrations are built and tested against each platform's sandbox before connecting to production. The risk this retires: the statement that doesn't reconcile.
04
Launch and support
We support migration of catalog data and historical royalty records, train the team on the admin and reporting interfaces, and provide documentation of the calculation logic so your finance team can audit it independently. A post-launch support window covers edge cases that surface with full catalog scale. The risk this retires: the migration that loses a catalog.
05 Track record
What you get working with RaftLabs
01
Practice sessions logged in TuneClub's first 60 days
200+
02
Creator feedback reviews in that same window
120+
03
From concept to TuneClub's working v1
12 wk
04
Cost, agreed before we build
Fixed
Where music tech is heading
Streaming already drives most of the money. As more of that revenue flows through per-stream, per-territory accounting, the operational weight shifts from getting music onto platforms to counting it correctly once it is there.
That changes what music software has to do. Royalty accuracy stops being a monthly batch job and becomes a continuous process. Statements recalculate as new DSP data lands. Metadata gets validated before delivery rather than corrected after a rejection. Rights checks hold up under audit. The teams who win the next few years treat rights, royalties, and metadata as live systems, not spreadsheets reconciled after the fact.
We build for that direction. Royalty engines that re-run as fresh usage data arrives, distribution pipelines that catch metadata errors before submission, and an audit trail your finance team can verify independently. The goal is software that stays accurate as your catalog and your DSP footprint keep growing.
06 Case studies
Music proof we've shipped
RaftLabs excelled in contemporary UI and delivered better high-fidelity wireframes. The team is culturally very strong, and they take a lot of pride in the quality of their work.
Gabe Moynagh
CEO, TuneClub
08 Why us
Why choose us?
01
We've seen your problem before
Across dozens of industries, we recognise your situation fast, then frame the fix around your margin and your operations, not a generic template.
02
We own the number, not the ticket
We measure success the way you do: hours saved, revenue earned, margin recovered. We stay through launch and growth, so the result is ours to own.
03
Serious businesses trust us
Vodafone, T-Mobile, Cisco, Energia, Aldi, Nike. Building since 2015. Serious businesses keep coming back because we stay accountable long after launch.
09 Questions
Common questions
Music businesses deal with licensing rules, royalty structures, and metadata standards that most software platforms weren't built to handle. Territory-based rights enforcement, per-stream royalty calculations across multiple rights holders, and multi-DSP metadata delivery all require logic that generic platforms approximate rather than implement correctly. The errors compound over time. Incorrect royalty statements, metadata mismatches at DSPs, and licensing violations are all downstream consequences of software that wasn't built for the actual complexity. Custom software handles your specific deal types and rights structure from the start.
Royalty statements are financial documents. Rights holders compare them against their own records and against DSP reports. Errors, even small ones, erode trust and create disputes that cost more to resolve than the original error was worth. A royalty system needs to apply your deal terms exactly, handle edge cases like multi-territory splits and catalog recoupment correctly, and produce an audit trail that shows how every figure was calculated. We build the calculation engine to be deterministic and testable so you can verify it against known figures before it goes live.
Yes. Streaming platform architecture for large catalogs requires decisions at the infrastructure level: how tracks are stored, how audio is delivered, how metadata is indexed for search and discovery, and how rights checks are applied at playback time without adding latency. We design for catalog scale from the start rather than building for small catalogs and hoping it holds. Delivery uses adaptive bitrate streaming via CDN. Rights enforcement is applied server-side per stream. Catalog indexing uses search infrastructure designed for the query patterns a streaming platform generates.
It depends on where your biggest operational pain is. If you're a label or distributor and your royalty statements are wrong or take weeks to produce, fix royalty management first. Errors here affect your relationships with rights holders directly. If you're delivering music to DSPs and losing time to manual metadata correction and fragmented revenue reporting, build a distribution platform. If you have a streaming use case that existing platforms can't support: rights enforcement requirements, catalog size, or white-label needs, build the streaming platform. We scope the problem before recommending where to start.
That fear is common and honest. The fallback is always the DIY spreadsheet: track title, ISRC, splits, expenses, payout dates, balances. It is a classic for a reason. We design the team workflows against that standard: royalty data entry that takes minutes, statements your team can read and defend, and an admin your finance lead can audit independently. The system ships when your team can run a full statement cycle on it without help.
Get a build-vs-aggregator plan for your music business
Tell us what you're building, where your current tools are breaking down, and what scale you're planning for. We'll scope a solution built around your specific requirements.
Scope and cost agreed before work starts. No surprises. No obligation.
Working prototype within 3 weeks of kickoff.
Pay by milestone. You see progress before each invoice.
60-day post-launch warranty. Bug fixes, UI tweaks, and deployment support. No retainer.
