The streaming platform for independent music.
What catalog.fm is
A streaming service that shows you exactly where your subscription fee goes.
Most platforms pool every subscription together and pay artists based on who dominated global streams. catalog.fm flips that — your monthly fee is divided only among the artists you played, weighted by how long you listened.
The Fee
$13 a month, paid by the listener.
The Split
Distributed only across the artists you actually listened to that month.
Your Impact
The more time you spent on an artist, the bigger their cut.
How does your subscription pay artists?
This calculator illustrates an example payout for artists in one month from a single user.
Your Listening Distribution
Artist A35%$3.63
Artist B0%$0.00
Artist C65%$6.75
Artist D0%$0.00
Artist E0%$0.00
Monthly Subscription$13.00
Platform Fee (15%)-$1.95
Stripe (2.9% + $0.30)-$0.68
To Artists$10.37
This calculator illustrates an example payout for artists in one month from a single user.
Most other streaming platforms use a pro-rata model, paying artists a fraction of a fraction of a penny for a single stream. In some cases, they require a minimum number of streams for the artist to receive any payout at all.
catalog.fm uses a user-centric model. We take a user's subscription fee and proportionally pay the artists they listened to that month with their subscription fee.
See how this compares with the status quo →What would an artist earn?
Drag the sliders to set how many people listen each month and what share of their streaming time goes to one artist on average. The estimate below is illustrative—it shows how payout scales as those inputs change.
100K
2.0%
Estimated monthly payout$20,746from 100K listeners
Payout is monthly listeners × subscription revenue per listener after fees × avg. listening share.
100,000 × $10.37 × 2.0% ≈ $20,746
Illustrative only—not a forecast for any one career. The link below has the full assumptions and a longer walkthrough of how we're thinking about payouts.
Join the waitlist
catalog.fm is in development. If this sounds like something you'd use or want to support, join the waitlist and we'll keep you updated on our progress.