Live
Music Distribution
Distribution & rights
Distribution to every major platform via a partner that pays out 100% of 100%, honest and transparent. Rights and metadata captured correctly, so you stay the owner.
View distributionWe build the music industry of tomorrow.
Honest, transparent and future-proof technology for makers. Four ventures, one conviction: the maker belongs at the center.
Ventures
4 ventures under one umbrella.
Live
Industry Business Academy
Knowledge & tools
Gamified and with interactive video content, with a CreatorPassport for your rights and income, a personal AI ArtistManager and a KnowledgeHub with all the jargon and sample contracts.
Visit Academy
Launching now
RadioMatic
Business audio · B2B
A gen-AI model not trained on copyrighted material. The output is not a commercial phonogram, so businesses save directly on licensing fees. Adaptable to location, weather and moment.
Visit RadioMatic
In development
TraXs
Open & decentralized
An open, decentralized streaming app where you own your data. With direct-to-fan and fan-investment: share future royalties with your fans in return for direct liquidity, without selling your rights forever.
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If you don’t own your masters, your master owns you.
Why we do this
Pro-music. Pro-artist. Pro-tech.
We build honest, transparent and future-proof tech for the music industry.
We come from the music world ourselves. Again and again we saw the same thing: the maker is the core of the industry, yet treated as a replaceable cash cow. The business side is kept needlessly complex. So we started building it ourselves, honestly and transparently. That's how each venture was born.
Music Distribution
Distribution & rightsThe problem
Parties make registering rights needlessly cumbersome, and many aggregators put your music online under opaque terms, sometimes charging a yearly fee just to stay online.
Our solution
We kept searching until we found a partner that pays out 100% of 100%, with clear terms and real contact. No middle layers squeezing the maker.
Industry Business Academy
Knowledge & toolsThe problem
The knowledge to protect yourself in business is scattered and inaccessible. The deck is stacked so the artist almost always loses out, look at the history of countless artists.
Our solution
All the business knowledge made interactive and gamified, with a CreatorPassport for your rights and income, a personal AI ArtistManager and sample contracts you walk through together.
RadioMatic
Business audio · B2BThe problem
The licensing model for business audio is technically unsustainable, and businesses pay into a system that collects poorly and barely reaches the maker.
Our solution
AI audio not trained on copyrighted material and not a commercial phonogram. Businesses save directly on licensing fees, and part of the profit goes into building TraXs further.
TraXs
Open & decentralizedThe problem
Streaming services do exactly what they were built for, and that was never to let artists earn. You don't know who listens, you don't set your price, and you can't connect directly with your fans.
Our solution
An open, decentralized streaming app where you own your data, with direct-to-fan and the option to share future royalties with your fans, without selling your rights forever.
In doing so, SmartLabel Media anticipates a changing market. AI makes recordings near-limitless and cheap, so value shifts to what stays scarce. The individual, the live artist, the real connection. Technology is a means in all this, not a label.
Our journey
An industry that says yes and does no.
How we got here, and why we do it differently.
“Education? Sure. But when push comes to shove, everyone runs for the big players and the money, away from their real responsibility.”
- 201901 / 06
It started with rights
We started in 2019 with something that should have been simple. Helping artists register their rights correctly. What we found was the opposite of simple. The parties that manage the rights world make registration needlessly cumbersome and technically astonishingly inefficient, and show little urgency to build a real solution. Global metadata is a mess, and precisely because of that, money disappears. Into the pockets of, well, not the right ones, let's say. A 2017 estimate put it at around 2.5 billion dollars in royalties without a known owner worldwide, and there is no reason to believe it has improved since. A Muso.AI analysis in October 2025 found that over 70% of the 224 million recordings at the US MLC are still not matched to a song and songwriter.
$2.5 bnin royalties without a known owner (2017 estimate). In 2025, over 70% of 224 mn recordings at the MLC were still unmatched (Muso.AI). - Then02 / 06
Looking for those who get it right
So we went looking for the parties that do get it right. Companies with an open API, willing to build in the right direction since the market for rights organisations in Europe was broken open in 2014 and the monopoly of the old players came under pressure. Always the same pattern. Change doesn’t come from within, but from newcomers who dare.
2014European market for rights organisations opened up - What we saw03 / 06
The industry talks about artists, not with them
Because that's what we kept seeing. Institutions that say they value education and transparency, but in practice mostly serve the interests of the big publishers and the establishment. The industry talks to the industry about artists, and seems to forget that the makers, creators and performers are the core of that industry. Not replaceable cash cows, but the source of all value.
- TraXs04 / 06
A fair model turns out hard to fund
The most telling was our own experience raising money for TraXs, our decentralized streaming app. An honest model, built to make the artist the owner, turned out to be hard to finance on fair terms precisely because of that. The status quo is comfortable for those who profit from it now, and real, deep change is exactly what those parties don't want.
Decentralized streaming app around the artist: development has started - The common thread05 / 06
Every wall, our own door
That's the thread. Every time we hit a wall, we built the door ourselves. That's why SmartLabel isn't a set of separate projects, but ventures that strengthen each other, from rights and knowledge to business audio, streaming and direct-to-fan. All from one conviction. The maker belongs at the center, and the technology should serve them.
Four ventures that strengthen each other - Now06 / 06
Looking away is not an option
And the world is changing faster than we'd sometimes like. We want to meet that honestly and with care, before big tech takes this chance away from the maker once again. Because when you have the chance, the means and the knowledge to do it differently, looking away and doing nothing is the one thing we could never forgive ourselves for.
In the media
Where we get talked about.
The company
Small team. Large infrastructure.
SmartLabel Media was founded in Groningen in 2019 and is led by two founders. Around them we build a wider network of partners, distribution, technology and makers, so each venture can grow on its own strength.
Company details
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- Founded
- 2019, Groningen
- Office
- Boterdiep 71, 9712 LL Groningen
- Ventures
- 4 under one umbrella
- CoC
- 86253344
SmartLabel B.V.