We just wanted to put out records. Royalties were holding us back. Sound familiar?

Born out of necessity, our story is probably a lot like yours.

Hey there,

Hunter here, co-founder and operator of Infinite Catalog.

People often ask how we got started, or why we built IC in the first place. Happily there’s a straightforward answer: we built IC because royalties are hard, and they were holding us back. We decided to make them easy, for ourselves and for you, so we can all grow better together.

A long time ago, I started a record label called Infinite Best. I just wanted to put out records and help artists, but soon found myself in “spreadsheet hell” trying to figure out how much money was being earned across all the different platforms, and most importantly, how much everyone was owed.

Turned out this was called “royalty accounting,” and it was a big part of my job. The more the label grew the longer it took, and every few months I’d have to do it all over again, so it was always weighing me down. I wanted to be transparent about everything, but all the data made it basically impossible without seeming even shadier. Every label I spoke to seemed to feel the same way.

I looked for software that could help, some kind of “quickbooks for royalties,” but everything I found seemed really out of date, too complicated, too expensive. So I stuck with spreadsheets, and began offering freelance royalty accounting services myself as a side-hustle. Labels started signing up almost immediately, and more kept showing up through word of mouth.

Eventually I asked Dev Gupta from the band Mr Twin Sister, no stranger to royalties and a talented programmer, if he might be interested in building the kind of software we both thought should have existed in the first place.

We called it Infinite Catalog, realizing that what we’d built worked for record labels, publishers, artists, or any other kind of “catalog” business. And because Dev is an artist himself, we made sure catalogs could give their artists/payees access not just to statements, but also dashboards, data, and the tools to analyze it all themselves.

Now, instead of wasting time in spreadsheets, worrying about royalties, and wondering about cashflow, everyone could finally be on the same page and grow better together. As one of our early adopters put it, IC “provides a whole new level of transparency that we’re proud of, a significant talking point with potential signees.”

Hundreds of catalogs now use IC to account to tens of thousands of payees, with more joining every day. We’re so grateful to do this work, and our excitement and energy to improve the software (and service!) is only getting stronger.

Thanks for reading! If any of this resonated with you, we hope you’ll give IC a try.

– Hunter (& Dev)