Royalty accounting has long been one of the most misunderstood and underserved challenges in music tech. Between tangled metadata, outdated spreadsheets, and inconsistent global reporting standards, the complexity is staggering. While many startups try to “disrupt” the space, most underestimate how fragmented and operationally brittle the ecosystem really is.

In episode #111 of the Sound Connections podcast, host Jakob Wredstrøm speaks with Tom Allen, founder of Curve and now CTO at Downtown Music, to uncover how he built a bootstrapped music royalty platform that not only worked but quietly dominated its niche. Their conversation reveals how solving real, non-flashy infrastructure problems with deliberate focus can lead to long-term defensibility,  and ultimately, acquisition.

This blog distills the critical lessons from Tom’s experience for founders, investors, and operators building within high-friction B2B music technology markets. If you’re working in metadata infrastructure, royalty management, or artist payment systems, this is your playbook.

The Challenges in Building Royalty Management Platforms for the Music Industry

The challenges in building royalty management platforms for the music industry are deeply rooted in complexity, fragmentation, and legacy infrastructure,  a fact that Tom understands better than most. As he explained, royalty accounting isn’t just a matter of tracking who gets paid. It’s about navigating a labyrinth of rights ownership, multi-territorial licensing rules, differing data standards, and payment timelines that vary wildly across partners.

At the core of the issue is metadata. Even a single track can involve multiple songwriters, publishers, territories, and contractual splits. When metadata is inconsistent or incomplete, which it often is,  the accuracy of royalty calculations falls apart. Tom highlighted that most legacy systems either scaled well (handling large catalogs) or managed complexity well (handling nuanced contractual terms), but rarely both. Curve’s value came from addressing this dual challenge at once,  a feat few platforms in the industry had achieved.

This reflects a broader pattern in music tech, where solutions often fail not because they aren’t innovative, but because they’re too brittle to withstand real-world usage. In fact, a recent Guardian investigation found that over 100,000 live performances across the UK couldn’t be matched to songwriters, resulting in £2.7 million of unclaimed royalties in a single year. These funds weren’t just lost—they eroded trust among artists, rights holders, and service providers.

Tom’s early experience building dashboards for royalty firms like the Music Royalty Company exposed just how urgent the need was. Existing tools were hitting operational ceilings: they couldn’t grow with their clients or handle new file formats and licensing models. The solution wasn’t to build flashier interfaces but to deeply understand how royalty accountants actually worked,  then translate that workflow into robust, scalable software.

He also notes that most platforms overestimate how much their users will adapt. In royalty accounting, “workarounds” are unacceptable. The people doing the job,  not just executives,  require a system that works from day one, integrates with their processes, and never compromises accuracy. This insight was central to Curve’s design.

The challenges in building royalty management platforms for the music industry are unlikely to fade soon. As the number of DSPs grows and licensing deals evolve, platforms must keep pace not only with volume but with complexity. Startups entering this space must recognize that solving for accuracy, not aesthetics, is what drives adoption,  especially in a vertical where even minor errors carry legal and financial consequences.

The Difference Between Painkiller and Vitamin SaaS in Music Tech

Understanding the difference between painkiller and vitamin SaaS in music tech is essential for any founder building a product for this vertical. On the podcast, Tom Allen emphasizes that Curve began its life as a pure painkiller, a must-have solution for royalty accountants wrestling with real, day-to-day chaos, not a vitamin that merely enhances something optional.

A painkiller SaaS solves an urgent, systemic problem that users cannot ignore. In music tech, royalty accounting tools aren’t nice-to-have; they’re indispensable. As Tom recounts, accountants will reject anything that introduces errors or slows down their workflow. Sound Connections’ conversation underlined that Curve’s design directly targeted this urgent pain: delivering accuracy, compliance, and trust in financial operations.

This aligns with established startup theory: painkiller products are those that solve existing, urgent needs and are far more likely to be bought and retained than “nice-to-have” tools. A 2025 Progress Report noted, “In challenging times... people only buy painkillers”,  making this distinction especially critical in deep B2B sectors like music royalties.

By contrast, a vitamin SaaS improves efficiency or experience but doesn’t fix a pressing problem. These products often struggle to justify budget or attention. Tom notes that flashy dashboards or marginal improvements in metadata dashboards were never the draw, accountants need solutions that resolve actual compliance issues, not optional analytics.

Tom’s insistence on building a painkiller isn’t abstract; it's grounded in his personal failure with Metable. Despite being a functional tool, it didn't stick because it didn't resolve a true urgency. Curve, by contrast, addressed a systemic failure in royalty systems, leading to immediate adoption and trust.

Why this distinction matters in music tech:

• Conversion & retention: Painkillers generate immediate necessity (“we cannot operate without this tool”), while vitamins are easily dropped under budget pressure.

• Investment justification: Finance teams readily greenlight tools that prevent legal or compliance risk, painkillers, not those with hypothetical upside.

• Faster product-market fit: Tools that solve urgent pain reach adoption faster than ones that promise future benefits.

The Benefits of Bootstrapping Music Technology Startups

For early-stage founders in music tech, particularly those building infrastructure or royalty-focused tools, the benefits of bootstrapping music technology startups go far beyond capital efficiency. Bootstrapping enables long-term strategic control and product clarity, critical advantages in a space where complexity often rewards precision over scale.

Focus and Ownership

Startups that grow without outside capital often maintain tighter alignment between product vision and execution. Instead of bending to investor timelines or rapid growth targets, bootstrapped teams can evolve deliberately, guided by genuine user needs. This slower pace can be a competitive strength, especially when the product serves operational roles like royalty accounting, where even minor flaws can create massive downstream issues. In such cases, control isn’t just financial, it’s strategic.

Agile Iteration Grounded in Real Use

One of the core benefits of bootstrapping music technology startups is the ability to stay close to the problem and iterate without external pressure. Many successful music SaaS platforms emerged not from pitch decks, but from years of quiet, iterative building alongside actual users. Instead of launching with a broad feature set, bootstrapped teams often start small and improve rapidly based on usage patterns and workflow bottlenecks. That proximity to the end user makes the product better, not just faster, but smarter.

Lean Structure and Disciplined Growth

When teams build without venture backing, every decision matters. Resources are finite, so growth is paced by results, not ambition. Lean teams often outperform larger, well-funded competitors by automating what matters and avoiding what doesn’t. In the royalty tech space, several companies have proven that three or four well-aligned contributors can build software stable enough to support major catalogs, so long as priorities stay tightly scoped.

Customer-Centric Thinking

Because Curve never raised outside capital, the team reinvested revenue cautiously and prioritized building only what their core users needed. Without investor pressure or inflated targets, the team focused entirely on solving problems for users already doing the work. That tight alignment helped drive retention and trust without relying on growth theatrics.

Key Acquisition Drivers for Music Royalty SaaS Platforms

When evaluating why Curve was acquired, it’s vital to understand the key acquisition drivers for music royalty SaaS platforms, those critical attributes that make a music tech tool attractive to buyers. Tom Allen highlights several core factors that positioned Curve as an ideal target for Downtown Music.

Recurring Revenue & High Retention

Curve had built predictable, subscription-based revenue with low churn, valuable in any SaaS due diligence. Buyers assess metrics like MRR/ARR, LTV/CAC ratio, and annual retention to gauge long-term viability. Consistent royalty earnings and retention from core clients made Curve an especially compelling acquisition.

Product-Market Fit & Vertical Niche Strength

Strategic acquirers target vertical-specific SaaS that deeply integrate into workflows. Curve’s focus on royalty accountants and precise problem-solving resonated with Downtown Music’s infrastructure needs. Vertical SaaS with strong fit often commands premiums even with lower ARR.

Scalable, Reliable Technology

Buyers scrutinize tech stacks for scalability, clean codebase, and automation readiness. Curve’s lean architecture and automated backend made post-acquisition integration smoother and risk-free, a major plus.

Clear Integration Potential & Intellectual Capital

Downtown Music eyed Curve for its seamless fit and engineering talent. Beyond the product, Curve brought processes and skillsets that could extend Downtown’s broader operations . As Tom noted, their value wasn’t flashy, it was dependable, repeatable and complementary.

 The key acquisition drivers for music royalty SaaS platforms include strong recurring and retained revenue, deep vertical integration, scalable tech, disciplined financials, and strategic fit. Curve delivered on all fronts, making it not just an easy acquisition target, but a high-value one.

Effective Product Strategy for B2B SaaS in the Music Industry

Curve’s success wasn’t accidental; it was the result of an effective product strategy for B2B SaaS in the music industry, built with obsessive alignment to one specific user persona and iterated through quiet, sustained user insight.

From the start, Tom Allen made it clear that Curve was not designed for executives or “decision-makers,” but for the royalty accountant actually doing the work. This clarity shaped everything,  from interface design to back-end scalability. He explained that they were solving the specific problem for the person doing royalties, focused solely on that one user.

User-Centered Development

Tom’s product process was strikingly non-corporate. Instead of specs and boards, he sat beside clients, asked why they worked a certain way, then built a small feature to solve just that. He acknowledged that he wasn’t writing PLDs, instead, he would ask clients to explain what they were doing, then go and sketch a potential solution. That lean, responsive development approach is central to an effective product strategy for B2B SaaS in the music industry.

This user-first mindset also explains Curve’s lack of churn. Clients trusted the product because they were shaping it, and because it never promised more than it could deliver. Tom emphasized that every demo was conducted honestly, and they never oversold.

Avoiding Premature Generalization

Curve resisted what many founders fall into: trying to build a platform “for everyone.” Tom made a deliberate choice not to generalize early. He knew that serving royalty accountants well meant saying “no” to other personas until the foundation was rock-solid. 

Iterative Trust-Building

Another core part of Tom’s product philosophy was to underpromise and overdeliver. In a complex and high-stakes space like royalties, trust is currency. Founders who exaggerate risk losing clients permanently. Curve gained traction because it always delivered just enough, the right feature at the right time, without bells and whistles that could break workflows.

As the team grew from three to eight to thirty people post-acquisition, they kept this core principle: always build for the user with the most pressure on them. That, in turn, enabled higher retention and referrals, not virality or ads, to fuel growth.

The most effective product strategy for B2B SaaS in the music industry is not about scaling fast, it’s about solving precisely. Build from the workflow out, resist generalization, and develop hand-in-hand with the user under the most pressure. Curve’s story proves that trust and specificity beat vision decks every time.

Scaling Lean Teams in Music Infrastructure Startups

Tom Allen’s journey with Curve is a case study in how to scale lean teams in music infrastructure startups, demonstrating that small size does not limit output, particularly in operationally intensive verticals like royalty software. At the time of its acquisition, Curve had 13 full-time employees. The company started with three full-time employees at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite this, it had achieved product-market fit and developed a platform robust enough for enterprise-level integration at Downtown Music.

As described on the podcast, the team’s success was driven by relentless focus and a tightly defined roadmap. Tom noted that hiring decisions were highly selective, only occurring when strictly necessary. This capital-efficient approach was not out of necessity but a deliberate strategy. Lean teams, they believed, moved with greater agility, stayed closer to the product, and avoided the pitfalls of bloated hierarchies.

Revenue-Funded Growth

A core principle in their approach was allowing revenue to dictate team growth. Curve deliberately reinvested its income into people only when the need was evident. Tom reflected that the founders deferred salaries for years, operating under the belief that each hire must immediately enhance the product or customer experience.

High Leverage Through Automation

Automation served as another strategic advantage. Curve’s backend was intentionally designed to minimize manual workflows, not just for end users but for internal operations as well. According to Tom, the roadmap was shaped by real user feedback, enabling automation that truly mattered. This helped maintain product reliability while avoiding unnecessary team expansion, an area where overfunded competitors often faltered.

Founder-Led Execution

A pivotal factor in Curve’s trajectory was its founder-led execution. Rather than outsourcing critical functions, Tom retained control over product, vision, and even sales until the platform’s core was mature. Early clients emerged from his personal network, and new features were developed in-house. Trust was earned through execution, not presentations.

Outcome Over Optics

While many music tech companies were downsizing, Curve was actively growing. Tom attributed this to a model that delivered results. Steady growth, fueled by customer revenue and product clarity, positioned Curve as both resilient and attractive for acquisition.

The key to scaling lean teams in music infrastructure startups lies in prioritizing impact over headcount. Curve’s journey highlights how intentional hiring, strategic automation, and founder-driven execution can outperform larger teams. In infrastructure-heavy B2B markets, scale is ultimately achieved through operational depth, not organizational size.

Conclusion: Why Solving Royalty Complexity Is Music Tech’s Biggest Opportunity

Tom Allen’s story offers a rare window into what it really takes to build, scale, and sell critical infrastructure in music technology, without funding hype, without inflated roadmaps, and without sacrificing user trust. His journey with Curve is not only a standout bootstrapped music startup acquisition case study, but also a blueprint for high-impact, founder-led product development.

Key Takeaways

1. Solve real operational pain, not just hypothetical problems: Curve succeeded because it was a painkiller, not a vitamin. It replaced error-prone manual royalty calculations with accuracy-first automation built specifically for royalty accountants.

2. Niche wins when you do it better than anyone else:  Curve didn’t try to serve labels, publishers, artists, and managers at once. It served one user persona incredibly well, and that depth created product-market fit and defensibility.

3. Bootstrapping unlocks disciplined focus:  Without investor pressure, Tom’s team built only what users needed. That clarity enabled lean scaling, high retention, and product integrity, key acquisition drivers for music royalty SaaS platforms.

4. Small teams can punch above their weight:  Curve was just three people when acquired, thanks to automation, high-leverage roles, and customer-funded growth. Scaling lean teams in music infrastructure startups is not only viable, it’s smart.

5. Founders must stay close to the problem:  Tom’s lack of bureaucracy allowed him to sit with users, understand their process, and build solutions they trusted. His product approach was not theoretical, it was embedded, practical, and relentless.

6. Trust > Traction: Curve never oversold. Every sale was grounded in what the product actually did. That honesty built loyalty and referrals, more powerful than any growth hack.

What Curve Proves About Music Tech

Curve’s journey validates that in music tech, infrastructure is the highest-leverage layer to innovate on. Royalty accounting may seem unglamorous, but it is mission-critical. By solving it precisely, Curve became indispensable, not because it disrupted the industry, but because it embedded into it.

This is the core lesson for founders: Operational complexity isn’t a barrier, it’s your moat. And for investors: Look for startups solving non-obvious, deeply entrenched problems with focused execution, not flashy branding.

In an industry hungry for innovation but short on trust, Curve proves that deliberate execution in boring infrastructure can lead to exceptional outcomes. The next wave of music tech will belong to those who build with this same clarity and grit.