Stem has launched Tone, a new brand and business devoted to creating modern financial tools for the music industry.
In a statement, the company said that Tone was created to “fix the broken financial processes across the entire music industry, regardless of which label or distributor an artist utilises, enabling them to take control of their finances and make informed decisions about growing their business.”
Stem will continue to operate a curated distribution business for independent artists and labels, while Tone develops a suite of financial tools for the music industry. The two brands will operate as separate business units.
Stem Disintermedia will continue to be led by Milana Lewis (pictured) as CEO, while former chief product officer Brendan Kao has been appointed as president of Tone. Kristin Graziani remains president of Stem Distribution.
"Stem is a music company powered by software built by musicians for musicians, and we've learned over the past eight years how impactful it is to pay artists and their collaborators in a clear and timely manner,” said Milana Lewis. “While other labels and distributors aspire to deliver that experience, they struggle to [do so]. Tone allows us to build solutions for the entire industry, working with other distributors and labels to deliver financial clarity to everyone getting paid from music."
Tone aims to make royalty processing simple for record labels by ingesting all sales and expense data, calculating royalties and enabling one-click payments for an entire label roster. Artists, songwriters and producers can log in to their own portal to understand and manage their finances across the multiple labels and distributors where they have released projects.
“More visibility should be the expectation and the standard,” said Shai Goodman, manager at YMU and Blume Records, an early user of Tone's royalty platform. “It’s great that Tone is providing that.”
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