Pipeline music finance platform

Pipeline co-founder and executive chairman Matt Spetzler. Photo Credit: Pipeline

B2B advance platform Pipeline has launched with over $200 million at its disposal and a goal of becoming “the largest funder of independent music globally.”

London-based Pipeline officially set sail (and disclosed its sizable war chest) today. Having operated in stealth for the past year or so, the self-described “flexible financing platform for the music and creative industries” was co-founded by former Francisco Partners tech investor Sofia Anglada, Jamie Rahamim (Aleph Capital Partners’ MD), and Matt Spetzler (who spent about two decades with Francisco until late 2024).

Besides doubling as the company’s executive chairman, Spetzler last year founded a family office called Jamen Capital. Jamen, for its part, backs “music, media and tech businesses” – including Pipeline, hence the just-revealed $200 million tranche.

In Pipeline’s own words, despite its “strong growth,” the indie sector is “structurally under-resourced in comparison to the major music corporations.”

And among other things, that means “smaller players are continually at a disadvantage, leading to missed opportunities or the need to turn to third-party acquisitions or onerous deal terms.”

Enter the entity’s “range of proprietary software tools” and “B2B financing solutions,” which are said to be “aligned with performance of its members rather than rigid loan structures.”

According to its website, Pipeline offers advances to “labels with over $500k in annual revenue and digital distributors with over $1M in revenue.” From there, the capital provider “takes an agreed percentage of monthly royalties until the advance is recouped, subject to a monthly minimum,” per the same source.

Focusing initially on indie labels and distributors, Pipeline intends to explore publisher and PRO agreements “in the next couple of months.”

“We aim to work closely with established partners across the music ecosystem to reduce friction, lower risk and improve speed, while enabling simpler, more flexible and advantageous deal terms versus what is currently offered to the independent community,” Spetzler summed up.

“Our ambition is to become the largest funder of independent music globally, reinforcing our company’s mission to help music companies scale and grow independently, on their own terms,” proceeded the exec, who’s currently the chairman of Recognition Music’s senior advisory group.

In support of this mission, Pipeline evidently capitalized on the stealth stretch by building out its executive team.

At present, the latter includes Pierre Suignard and Stéphane Hubert, both specializing in investments/underwriting and vets of BMG as well as catalog-valuation and sale-advisory firm Clarty; fellow BMG alumnus Jason Munro as general counsel and head of business affairs; data analytics manager Elizabeth Horton; Jay Srivastav, the co-founder and former CEO of rightsholder analytics platform Syncopate, as head of data and product; and Jennifer Scher, formerly Seeker Music’s CFO, in the same role.