Coda Debuts: MassiveMusic Powers Artist-First Streaming with Fairer Royalty Model

Creative music agency MassiveMusic has launched Coda, a new streaming platform aimed at overhauling how independent artists earn revenue from their music. Available now on both the App Store and Google Play, the platform is powered by MassiveMusic, whose licensing, technology, and delivery infrastructure enables access to over 120 million fully cleared tracks across North America. MassiveMusic, one of the world’s leading music partners for brands, platforms, and creators, ensures every stream on Coda is legal, scalable, and rights-compliant.

This article was created in collaboration with DMN partner Songtradr.

Coda is designed to address persistent concerns among independent musicians about the fairness of digital streaming payouts. While traditional streaming giants like Spotify direct a significant portion of royalty payments to major labels, Coda stands out for its focus on direct artist-to-fan revenue. The core innovation—revenue is structured on a per-fan basis, ensuring that artists capture a fairer portion of the value generated by their listeners. Early adopters include household names like Eric Clapton and Evanescence, bringing visibility and credibility to this fairer compensation model.

Where typical models pool revenues and allocate them based on overall share of listens—which often disadvantages smaller, independent acts—Coda uses technology to track precise engagement and convert this data into more transparent payments for creators. This approach introduces a new revenue stream for independent musicians in a market where streaming has recently overtaken both physical and download sales as the primary source of income for independent artists.

How Coda Works

Coda’s platform stretches beyond passive streaming. It leverages a socially interactive ecosystem where fans can not only listen but participate in artist discovery, community discussions, and exclusive content drops. Features like fan-driven discovery and music personality profiles give listeners new ways to support favorite artists, while creators can cultivate direct relationships with their audience.

A key mechanism behind Coda’s more equitable payout structure is its use of innovative rights tokenization. Through the platform, artists can tokenize specific music rights using Royalty Rights Tokens (RRTs), which represent shares of music IP. Fans can purchase these tokens, allowing artists to raise funds without relinquishing ownership of their master copyrights.

Rights can be subdivided by type—mechanical, sync, streaming—and by territory or term, ensuring that creators retain complete control over their work while selling only the rights they choose. This process opens up global creative financing, giving musicians access to wider support communities and recurring income streams by involving superfans and investors directly in their success.

By holding these tokens, individuals are entitled to receive a passive income based on actual royalty distributions paid out for the music they supported. For an artist, this system bypasses the need for a label or a distributor, linking payments directly to fan engagement and stream counts. Artists on Coda can receive payments through several possible routes:

• Earnings from regular streaming activity by fans on the platform
• Proceeds from the sale or licensing of royalty rights to fans through RRTs
• Fan engagement and exclusive content experiences, which can be monetized

The Coda model is designed to lower barriers to entry for artists by offering a zero-entry fee system and clear legal frameworks around rights and payments. All transactions—from the sale and transfer of tokens and royalty splits—are tracked and transparent for artists and investors. This reduces disputes and ensures timely payments for both parties involved in the transaction.

Industry Support & Strategic Vision

The launch of Coda is supported by MassiveMusic’s expanded capabilities in licensing and delivery infrastructure, strengthened by the rebrand and unification of several leading music and technology companies — including 7digital, Big Sync Music, Musicube, and Resonance Sonic Branding — under one global brand.

“This unification under MassiveMusic marks a pivotal step in simplifying the complexities of the music industry for our clients,” Songtradr CEO Paul Wiltshire shared recently. “Together, we deliver scalable, tech-driven, and creative sonic solutions that deepen emotional connections, elevate brand perception, and drive measurable business results across every touchpoint.”

Merlin, one of the world’s largest digital rights agencies for independents, is already backing Coda with premium music catalog support. That indicates strong sector belief in the platform’s artist-first approach to revenue.

“Independent music is built upon community. In the same fashion, we built Coda Music to foster enhanced connections between independent artists and their fans,” adds Coda Founder & CEO Randy Fusee. “This partnership is about redefining what it means to discover, share, and celebrate music in the digital age.”

By focusing on fan-driven compensation and new models for rights monetization, Coda may signal a critical turning point for independent artists — a chance to finally participate more equitably in the economics of music streaming. Powered by MassiveMusic’s licensing expertise and delivery infrastructure, the platform ensures every stream is legal, scalable, and rights-compliant.

By involving superfans and the broader music community as financial supporters or co-owners of the music’s success, artists can raise funds in advance for releases or tours, then share in the long-term upside of their growing catalog. This aligns artist incentives with fan community growth and has the potential to increase recurring income — not just one-time royalties.