Catalog Reclaims Billion-Dollar Music Licensing Industry for Culturally Vital Artists

06 November 2025 - Press release

Proven in private BETA with Hermès and Dior, the platform ends the impossible choice between artistry and the brutal deadlines of visual media

!K7, Beggars Group, City Slang, Domino, Erased Tapes, Kompakt, Mute Song, Ninja Tune, Partisan Records, Warp& more form founding alliance of partners

 

Catalog debuts the first end-to-end curated music licensing marketplace for storytellers in film, television, video games, editorial and advertising. Arriving with an opening roster of 30,000+ tracks from over 1,800 artists and 60 defining imprints, the platform serves as an antidote to the $1.3B stock "royalty-free" sync industry - a vacuum which devalues artistry; where convenience is killing culture. Now, for the first time, licensing culturally relevant music is no longer a matter of months, but hours, meaning artists are rightfully restored the opportunity to have their music synced at the speed of culture and be compensated in real-time. 

Catalog launches with a global union of the most respected independent labels and publishers worldwide. The alliance is anchored by revered institutions including !K7, Beggars Group, Domino, Ninja Tune, and Warp, joined by a roster of genre-defining tastemakers including City Slang, DFA, Erased Tapes, Mute Song, Partisan Records, Soundway and Kompakt. The combination of powerhouses delivers a statement of artistic authority and integrity. An offering that is a testament to Catalog's principles: artists of every scale - from lauded cult disruptors to global icons, past and present. The platform offers Haçienda's resident legend Laurent Garnier, the rare Nigerian funk of Steve Monite, the industrial pulse of Chris & Cosey, and the deep Italian cinema cuts of CAM Sugar's Red Light Disco selection. While Indie royalty Belle and Sebastian, the singular voice of Kurt Vile, cinematic icon Ólafur Arnalds, and Krautrock pioneers NEU! stand alongside contemporary visionaries like Marie Davidson, Yves Tumor, and Ela Minus.

"This is the culmination of a 20-year career spent watching a broken system funnel billions of dollars away from relevant artists and into 'ghost artist' libraries, especially on projects where time and budget are tight," said Frederic Schindler, Catalog Founder and AIM's Music Supervisor of the Year (2025). "The solution isn't to abandon artistry for convenience; it's to fix the friction. We built Catalog to empower storytellers to use music they love, and to redirect that billion-dollar revenue stream back to the artists who are the lifeblood of our culture."

At its core, Catalog is the creative's ultimate sync record shop. It preserves the soul of 'crate-digging' but powers it with the speed of technology the modern industry demands. The platform replaces the archaic, fragmented music licensing process with a single, intelligent workflow. The journey begins with discovery: creatives can search with technical precision - using audio similarity, advanced filtering, and audio-to-picture auditioning - or be guided by a human-led "editorial search" mode to find relevant tracks in minutes. Valuation is made transparent through Catalog's proprietary Sync Smart Pricing™, which analyses thousands of data points on artist and song history to generate a market-rate estimate to guide an offer. By erasing administrative friction, the technology is designed to liberate the most valuable asset in the industry: a creative professional's vision and taste, and the time they need to express it.

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"In my world, you don't need 'a song,' you need 'the song' that elevates the entire narrative," said Françoise Jacquey, Head of the Creative Studio at PUIG (Carolina Herrera, Rabanne, Jean-Paul Gaultier). "Catalog is built on that principle, making an uncompromising level of artistic integrity accessible to the entire industry."

With most approvals secured in hours, the system bypasses the draining cycle of Word documents and red-lines by instantly auto-generating a final license - authenticated on the blockchain - once the terms have been agreed upon. Thus, a complex, multi-stakeholder deal is completed with a single invoice and one secure, immutable document.

The platform's power has been proven in private BETA, solving ambitions and challenging briefs for the world's most influential creatives.

For the Hermès Men's Ready to Wear 2026 show, Creative DirectorVeronique Nichanian asked Music Director Thierry Planelle to replace a key track just days out from the runway to better display Hermès' tradition of uncompromising excellence. Catalog delivered a perfect and previously unsynced alternative in under 24 hours: COMA's 'A-train (Saul Poler Spiral Revision).'The feat prompted a strong endorsement from label partner and one of the industry's most respected voices, Christof Ellinghaus, Founder and CEO of City Slang: "This placement very quickly demonstrated Catalog's ease of process and powerful usability," he said, "we are excited about the prospects ahead with this great new platform. And trust us, we usually hate platforms!"

Catalog founding partners are ready to bring the sync industry into the future: "Music licensing is ready for innovation, fresh ideas, and new technologies," states Lucy Sharratt, Licensing Creative Director of Warp Records. For Isobel Palos, Head of Sync at Ninja Tune, the change needs to be rooted in a trusted, artist-first approach: "The Catalog team has always prioritised artists above all other factors and that has been the founding principle of developing what is a very impressive platform." David McGinnis, MD at Mute Song, concludes, "We believe Catalog marks an exciting new chapter in the sync ecosystem - one that is equitable, rewarding, and respectful of the artists we represent."

Catalog launches with a 200-person waitlist of leading supervisors and creatives. Membership applications are now open in the US, Canada, Mexico, the UK, and Europe, with the first wave of approved applicants being granted access starting today.

 

Discover more at: catalog.ac