Denis Ladegaillerie
Founder & CEO, Believe
Every successful startup follows a familiar coming-of-age story. It begins with the founder’s personal savings or early angel investors, moves through rounds of venture capital backing, and eventually faces the ultimate graduation: the Initial Public Offering (IPO). An IPO is the exact moment a company opens its doors to the world, letting institutional investors and regular people buy shares on a public stock exchange like the Paris Euronext or the New York Stock Exchange.
When a company goes public, its value is no longer a boardroom estimate; it is decided in real-time by supply and demand. If the company is generating massive heat and hitting its growth goals, the share price climbs. Tech giants have used this path to blast into the stratosphere; Google did it in 2004 with a $23 billion valuation, and Facebook followed in 2012, raising $16 billion to hit a massive $104 billion valuation. For an ambitious company, an IPO is the ultimate war chest generator, providing the public equity capital needed to acquire competitors, hire top-tier talent, and break into new global territories.
By 2021, after fifteen years of independent scaling, Believe was ready for its own public validation. On June 1, 2021, the company officially launched its IPO on the Paris Euronext, aiming to raise €300 million by floating 14.35% of the company on the open market.
Developing an innovative technological platform, having the best digital expertise on the market, with local teams close to artists and independent labels, directly or indirectly, in the United States, Canada, Australia or Japan to build relationships of trust with them based on respect, transparency and fairness: these are the fundamental elements serving our ambition
“Our ambition is to become the global leader in developing independent artists and labels in the digital world […] [An IPO] will allow us to finance our growth, in particular through targeted acquisitions. Developing an innovative technological platform, having the best digital expertise on the market, with local teams close to artists and independent labels, directly or indirectly, in the United States, Canada, Australia or Japan to build relationships of trust with them based on respect, transparency and fairness: these are the fundamental elements serving our ambition”, said Denis Ladegaillerie at the time of the launch.
The financial community loved the pitch. Bidding within an indicative range between €19.50 and €22.50 per share, the market snapped up an initial issuance of 15,384,616 brand-new shares. Settling at an opening price of €19.50 per share, Believe officially achieved a massive debut market capitalization of €1.87 billion. Reflecting on the successful launch, Denis Ladegaillerie noted that Believe was now “crossing a new threshold in its development by going public”.
Going on a global shopping spree
The stock market launch wasn’t just a vanity play; it was backed by explosive underlying business numbers. Believe’s global revenues for the first half of 2021 had skyrocketed by 30% to hit €260 million, up from €196 million during the same period the previous year. To set the stage for this public expansion, their DIY platform TuneCore had just expanded its flags into Africa and Southeast Asia earlier that spring, riding high on the news that it had funneled $412 million directly into independent artist pockets in 2020 alone.
With €300 million in fresh public capital burning a hole in its pocket, Believe immediately went on a strong global acquisition campaign to increase its international market share.
In November 2021, the company acquired a 25% stake in the prominent French independent label Play Two. That very same month, Believe dropped €13 million to secure a 76% stake in South Indian powerhouse Think Music. By December, they extended their reach across the Pacific, securing a 15% stake in the Philippines’ Viva Music & Artists Group.
Upgrading the Independent Tech Stack
Alongside this corporate shopping spree, Believe funneled significant resources back into its internal technology, ensuring independent artists had the absolute best digital tools on the market.
In September 2021, drawing on the backend tech from their previous acquisition of Soundsgood, the company rolled out Backstage Link, a sophisticated smart-link tool designed to help artists track and optimize their fan traffic. By November, they launched specialized social distribution tools for DIY creators, allowing independent artists to seamlessly drop their tracks directly into the music libraries of hyper-viral social platforms including TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Instagram Reels.
The Great 2021 Music Gold Rush
This public graduation occurred during an absolutely staggering boom period for the entire global music ecosystem. According to data from the IFPI, global recorded music revenues surged by 18.5% to reach $25.9 billion in 2021. Streaming was the undisputed king, jumping 24.3% to hit $16.9 billion and capturing a dominant 65% of the total market. By the end of the year, the global population of paid streaming subscribers had grown to 523 million users.
Capital was flying everywhere as corporations scrambled to consolidate music assets. In March, a consortium led by rap icon Jay-Z sold the streaming service Tidal to tech company Square for $300 million. In May, Sony Music Entertainment completed its purchase of independent distributor AWAL and Kobalt Neighbouring Rights for $430 million. The major label buying spree didn’t stop there; by December, Warner Music Group snapped up independent hip-hop haven 300 Entertainment for $400 million, while Sony bought up the remaining 50% of Ultra Records it didn’t already own.
However, the most monumental financial event in the major label world occurred in September 2021, when legacy giant Universal Music Group (UMG) launched its own blockbuster IPO on the Euronext Amsterdam stock exchange. Handed an initial reference price of €18.50 per share, UMG’s stock went wild on opening day, peaking at €25.61 before settling at €24.97, handing the major a staggering €45 billion valuation by closing bell.
Independence is the new mainstream
In a year defined by mega-corporate mergers and multi-billion-dollar major label valuations, the Believe IPO stood as a massive, timely victory for the independent music community. It proved to Wall Street and global tech investors that music’s digital future wasn’t just a playground for legacy corporate conglomerates.
By holding its own and performing strongly on the Paris Euronext, Believe sent an undeniable message to the entire global industry: in the streaming era, independent artistry was no longer a beautiful, alternative market niche. Independence had officially become the new mainstream.
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Article written by Eamonn Forde. Eamonn Forde is an award-winning music business journalist and author. He writes for The Guardian, Forbes; Music Week, and Music Business Worldwide and several other publications.
The Believe Story
By March 2020, the physical world came to a sudden, grinding halt. As the Covid-19 pandemic triggered global lockdowns, offices closed, streets emptied, and the live music industry vanished overnight. Concert venues were shuttered, tours were canceled, and artists were left stranded, wondering how they would survive without the stage.
Yet, while the physical world was on pause, the digital world switched into hyperdrive. Stuck inside, millions of people turned to digital entertainment as a lifeline, causing massive surges in music streaming, podcast listening, and video viewing. For artists, a “digital-first” mindset was no longer just a forward-thinking business strategy: it became a financial life jacket. While they experimented with livestreams and direct-to-fan merchandise sales to keep the lights on, the automated nature of digital streaming kept royalties flowing directly into their pockets.
Saving the Songs of the Soil
In India, the lockdown posed an immediate threat to traditional musical communities. While urban pop stars could easily pivot to streaming concerts from their living rooms, rural folk musicians living in remote villages were completely cut off from their audiences and essential supplies. Because these traditional artists relied entirely on local festivals and physical gatherings to survive, the pandemic threatened to wipe out their livelihoods entirely.
Believe stepped up in April 2020, partnering with the non-profit Anahad Foundation to launch Let’s Folk Together, an artist relief fundraiser aimed at supporting 5,000 folk artists across the country. The press release issued at that time was adamant:
“Today, the folk music community in India find themselves in an extremely tragic circumstance as they remain in lockdown in remote villages, cut-off from metros and essential supplies and while India fights to curb the spread of the virus, the future of the folk music community, which relies completely on their craft as musicians focused mainly on shows and events, is at risk.“
A million dollars a day for the bedroom producer
Right in the middle of this global shutdown, Believe officially rolled its automated independent distribution platform, TuneCore, into India in July 2020. The timing was impeccable. Globally, TuneCore was already paying out a staggering $1 million a day to self-releasing artists, crossing a historic milestone of $2 billion in total independent payouts by that October.
For small, grassroots Indian acts with no corporate label backing, the platform provided an immediate financial engine when all other doors were shut. TuneCore quickly integrated into the local digital fabric, partnering with domestic streaming giant Gaana in October. This local launch gave Believe an incredibly powerful talent incubator; independent acts could kickstart their careers completely on their own terms through TuneCore, while Believe’s local teams monitored the data to identify who was ready to be graduated into their premium artist services and full-label divisions.
Bypassing Bollywood for the heartland
I’ve seen this journey over and over again, where the real growth is coming from regional markets. The regions are hungry for culture. The culture there is different, the artist languages are different, and even sounds sometimes can be very different.
Vivek Raina
Managing Director, India
Believe’s rapid expansion in India was built on a different approach to artist development, as they chose to ignore the standard industry playbook. While Bollywood remained the dominant force in the country’s recorded music industry, Believe India did the exact opposite. They looked past the movie studios and the massive metros, wagering that the true, untapped future of Indian music lay in the incredibly diverse regional music scenes bubbling up in “tier two” and “tier three” cities.
“Our strategy was to remain big in the regional markets,” says Vivek Raina. “By regional, that means tier two and tier three cities. And when the boom came, the biggest beneficiaries were us because we were not into Bollywood. Bollywood generally concentrated on the mainstream Hindi OST Content. So when the regional boom happened, the biggest beneficiaries were people like us.“
As affordable smartphones and mobile data spread rapidly through India’s smaller towns, regional audiences grew hungry for music sung in their own local languages and distinct cultural dialects.
“I’ve seen this journey over and over again, where the real growth is coming from regional markets,” Vivek Raina explains. “The regions are hungry for culture. The culture there is different, the artist languages are different, and even sounds sometimes can be very different.“
Fueling the underdog labels
Rather than focusing exclusively on the largest, most established players, Believe India acted as a nimble catalyst and developed partnerships with independent local underdog labels across the country. Combining local expertise with financial investment, technology and digital services, the company helped these labels expand their reach while contributing to the growth of India’s increasingly diverse music ecosystem.
“The way the market was structured was that you had global majors and you have local majors – and they pretty much covered 90% of the market”, Vivek Raina explains. “That was between six, seven or eight labels. But there were smaller labels which had a great capacity for developing artists under the umbrella. Apart from this, however, you also need financial support if they are to compete with the local majors or international majors. You picked up the markets where you have the highest possibility of developing the next stage of artists. It was a combination of technological support, human intelligence, and financial support.“
The long-term payoff
Mahra Tora is an imprint for a segment which, three or four years ago, was a very small market segment in India. The idea is not to sign at scale, but to pick up an artist at the emerging level, where we can spend time, energy, and cash in developing this artist further.
Vivek Raina
Managing Director, India
This patient, grassroots strategy laid the foundation for entirely new sub-genres to explode into the mainstream. A perfect example of this blueprint was the June 2025 launch of Mahra Tora, Believe India’s dedicated imprint for Haryanvi music; a distinct, highly urban regional sound that was practically invisible to the mainstream industry just a few years prior.
“Mahra Tora is an imprint for a segment which, three or four years ago, was a very small market segment in India,” says Vivek Raina. “The sound is very close to what Punjabi music is, very urban. The idea of the imprint is not to sign at scale, but to pick up an artist at the emerging level, where we can spend time, energy, and cash in developing this artist further.“
By refusing to back down during the uncertainty of 2020, Believe’s deep investment in the cultural wealth of India’s heartland has rewritten the balance of power in the market.
“We are already top three in the market,” says Vivek Raina, looking at the position Believe now holds. “We want to be number one in the next two years.“
By the close of 2020, Believe’s strategy in India demonstrated how digital infrastructure and local expertise could reinforce one another. Combining technology, regional partnerships and long-term artist development, the company strengthened its position in one of the world’s fastest-growing music markets.
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Article written by Eamonn Forde. Eamonn Forde is an award-winning music business journalist and author. He writes for The Guardian, Forbes; Music Week, and Music Business Worldwide and several other publications.
The Believe Story
Back in the twentieth century, stealing music took actual physical labor. If you wanted to run a piracy ring or distribute bootlegged concert tapes, you needed a brick-and-mortar pressing plant, boxes of raw materials, and a distribution truck.
For the anti-piracy teams running around trying to protect artist music, the target was clear: find the illegal factories and lock the doors. Even when CD burners and early file-sharing networks threw the industry into a loop around the turn of the millennium, piracy still required individual human users downloading individual files.
Streaming, however, completely rewrote the rules of engagement, giving birth to a completely invisible breed of financial scam. Instead of copying songs to sell them on the street, digital scammers began deploying bot farms, fake artist profiles, and manipulated playlists to automatically rack up millions of automated plays.
The goal wasn’t to share music; it was to trick the algorithms and siphon unearned cash out of the shared pool of money that streaming platforms used to pay legitimate creators. By 2019, according to data from the IFPI, global streaming revenue had climbed to $11.4 billion, accounting for a massive 56.1% of the entire global recorded music market. There was a giant pile of digital money sitting on the table, and internet scammers rushed in to grab a piece of it.
Catching the Copycats at the Front Door
We were at the forefront to address the fraud problem, which can be seen as a direct value extraction of money which should go in the pool of royalties for the artists. Our mission is centered on creating fair conditions for the artist and helping the DSPs to fight against fraud.
Romain Becker
Group Chief Operating Officer
While the rise of automated generative artificial intelligence would eventually expand this problem by allowing scammers to cheaply pump out millions of artificial tracks, the foundational battle lines were drawn in 2019. Believe was among the absolute first music companies to recognize that streaming manipulation was going to threaten the livelihood of real musicians, and they moved fast to protect their ecosystem.
At the time, Spotify was tracking around 40,000 brand-new song uploads every single day. To keep fraudulent files out of that massive daily wave, Believe partnered with the tech firm ACRCloud in July 2019, implementing an advanced audio-fingerprinting system. Think of it like an automated digital scanner: before a song could be distributed to streaming stores, the software checked its unique sonic print against existing databases to ensure a scammer wasn’t trying to re-upload someone else’s copyrighted work to steal their royalties.
“We were at the forefront to address the fraud problem, which can be seen as a direct value extraction of money which should go in the pool of royalties for the artists,” says Romain Becker. “Our mission is centered on creating fair conditions for the artist and helping the DSPs to fight against fraud.“
The ten-dollar streaming trap
To clean up the streaming landscape, Believe realised it couldn’t just build technical firewalls; it also had to educate independent labels and artists. Many independent creators didn’t understand the inner workings of digital platforms, making them easy targets for shady marketing companies making fraudulent promises.
We started an entire compliance process to be able to support the DSPs to identify fraudsters, educate our artists and our labels on what could be considered as fraud and how to avoid the fraud trap, Romain Becker explains.
The biggest risk was that ordinary, well-meaning independent labels were falling under the influence of digital scammers who cloaked fake bot plays as legitimate marketing campaigns.
“Some of our clients might receive a compelling email saying, ‘Hey, do you want to create fifty-thousand streams for your artist for ten bucks?’” says Romain Becker. “If I was a label, I might think, ‘Yeah, let’s try it!’ But this has a consequence. We trust our clients and we trust our artists to understand the implications of this. So rather than fighting the problem by just punishing or cutting contracts with them, we had an educational approach on what constitutes fraud, how to avoid falling into the trap of fraud, and how to avoid an appealing value proposition that will turn against you at the end of the day.“
Playing Cop on Repeat Offenders
We’ve built a fraud streaming policy which has gradual penalties that can go all the way up to contract termination with Believe. Have we terminated some contracts with some labels? Yes, we’ve done that
Romain Becker
Group Chief Operating Officer
While Believe preferred to teach independent artists how to spot these traps, they maintained a zero-tolerance policy for accounts that willfully chose to cheat the system. If a distributor lets fraudulent streams slide, it dilutes the payouts for every honest artist on the platform.
“If the education process didn’t work then it meant that we had a client who had decided to put fraud at the center of their business model, and they are people we can’t work with,” Romain Becker says bluntly. “For this, we’ve built a fraud streaming policy which has gradual penalties that can go all the way up to contract termination with Believe. Have we terminated some contracts with some labels? Yes, we’ve done that. We’ve done that because they were not respecting the rules, they had not understood the warning, and they were creating an issue in the ecosystem. We have to police this.“
Uniting the global industry
As streaming fraud expanded into an industry-wide headache, with some modern estimates suggesting that artificial plays impact nearly 10% of all global streams, Believe pushed for a united response. Protecting the integrity of the digital music economy required every major distributor and tech platform to start sharing their security data.
This shared mission laid the groundwork for the 2023 launch of the Music Fights Fraud Alliance (MFFA). Believe and its DIY arm TuneCore joined forces as founding members alongside digital giants like Spotify and Amazon Music to create a united, cross-industry frontline against streaming manipulation.
By the close of 2019, protecting the integrity of digital music had become an integral part of Believe’s operating model. Beyond enabling digital distribution and artist development, the company increasingly invested in the technologies, policies and industry partnerships needed to support a trusted and sustainable streaming ecosystem.
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Article written by Eamonn Forde. Eamonn Forde is an award-winning music business journalist and author. He writes for The Guardian, Forbes; Music Week, and Music Business Worldwide and several other publications.
The Believe Story
By 2018, the global music streaming economy had matured from a wild frontier into a massive, highly structured marketplace. According to IFPI data, global revenues rose 9.7% to reach $19.1 billion, with subscription streaming accounting for a solid 37% of the entire market. Believe was riding this wave at full speed, reporting an annual corporate turnover of $500 million and commanding a global team of 700 employees.
With this massive scale came a new challenge. Independent artists who had used Believe for years to get their music onto digital platforms were growing up. They were no longer just looking for a way to get their files onto Spotify or Apple Music; they needed full-scale marketing campaigns, branding expertise, and localized support; but they still refused to sign away their independence to traditional major labels.
To bridge this gap, Believe officially formalized a brand-new corporate arm in 2018: the Artist Services division. It was a structural leap forward designed to give independent artists the muscle of a major label while preserving greater flexibility in the way partnerships were structured.
Inventing the digital record label team
The building blocks for this new division had been quietly developing within the company’s local offices. In France, Henri Jamet had realised early on that modern streaming campaigns required an entirely new type of music executive; one who understood social media algorithms and streaming store optimization rather than traditional physical manufacturing.
“I helped develop artist services, the label model and the project manager function,” says Henri Jamet. “The role of community manager didn’t exist at the traditional level in music companies. I hired one person to manage our Deezer, Spotify and Instagram pages, which was a completely new approach.“
Going local in underserved markets
When we think about artist services, it is always local. We are thinking about local artists and how these local artists are interacting in their market. The idea is to have a strong local brand that supports artists in the local market.
Elsa Bahamonde-Bourgain
President Artist Services and Label & Artist Solutions
While many major labels organized their international operations around established music centres such as New York, London and Paris, Believe’s Artist Services division emphasized local teams and expertise. The company invested in high-growth markets across Asia and Latin America, adapting its model to best serve each local music ecosystem.
Elsa Bahamonde Bourgain, who joined Believe to scale these international operations, explains how the division was built from the ground up to support regional music ecosystems.
“The idea was to launch Artist Services to accelerate our position in the artist services field across the different countries that we decided to launch in,” Elsa Bahamonde Bourgain explains. “When we started twenty years ago, we concentrated more on how to best distribute artists and labels, and how to develop them. What we did really well at that time was to be very early in some countries in Asia and in Latin America where perhaps other players in the music industry were not investing so much.“
The demand for these hands-on marketing campaigns grew organically from the artists themselves as their digital fanbases expanded.
“We observed in Asia, in Latin America, and also in Europe that Artist Services had been started very naturally at the request of some of our artists to support them on the marketing side, to support them on how to develop them on branding activities, on a more 360-degree approach,” Elsa Bahamonde Bourgain says.
To turn this demand into a professional reality, Believe focused on hiring local market experts who understood the distinct cultural nuances of their own domestic music scenes.
“My first mission was to hire the teams locally to make sure that we had great leaders to develop artist services in each one of those territories, to position the offer and create strong brands in the different countries,” Elsa Bahamonde Bourgain says. “When we think about artist services, it is always local. We are thinking about local artists and how these local artists are interacting in their market. The idea is to have a strong local brand that supports artists in the local market. The mission was to make sure everyone in the market – the artists, the producers, and all the people working with them – understood all this additional value we were bringing to them.“
Flexible pathways for artist development
To make this model work and unlike more fixed contractual models, Believe designed Artist Services to be entirely fluid, acting as a modular bridge that lets artists scale their operational backing up or down depending on the exact timing of their careers.
The structure allowed artists to move between service levels as their careers evolved, providing support that could be adapted to changing needs and ambitions.
“The idea is to not be siloed in how we work with an artist,” Elsa Bahamonde Bourgain insists. “An artist will go through a path through their career, and what we want to do is to ensure that we can support them at every single stage.“
This flexibility meant that an artist could easily transition from basic digital distribution to full-scale marketing support as their momentum grew.
“We have several interesting cases of artists who started on TuneCore and then, at some point, they decided to sign with Artist Services, or they decided to sign with artist distribution”, Elsa Bahamonde Bourgain notes. “There are other cases of artists that moved from artist distribution to artist services because their needs were changing and evolving through their career. Our idea is not to block one artist in one offer, but it’s making sure that we adapt to what an artist needs at each moment.“
From Pop Queens to Hip-Hop Superstars
Take Nancy Ajram, a big pop Lebanese artist.She was previously signed to an artist distribution deal. We moved her into an Artist Services deal because she was willing to have more marketing expertise actively supporting her in her development.
Elsa Bahamonde-Bourgain
President Artist Services and Label & Artist Solutions
The real-world proof of this modular strategy quickly rolled in across international borders, showing its effectiveness across completely different musical genres and regions.
“Take Nancy Ajram, a big pop Lebanese artist,” Elsa Bahamonde Bourgain shares. “She was previously signed to an artist distribution deal. We moved her into an Artist Services deal because she was willing to have more marketing expertise actively supporting her in her development.“
A similar, long-term development story unfolded in Southeast Asia, where Believe used its local infrastructure to turn an emerging underground artist into a massive regional headliner.
“We also have artists that were, for example, just signing to Artist Services, but we signed them at a very early stage”, Elsa Bahamonde Bourgain continues. “What we have done is also to grow the services that, even inside artist services, we were delivering to them. Saran is the top hip-hop artist in Thailand and we’ve been working with him for the past five years. When we signed him, he was really at this emerging phase, so his needs were more limited to the digital side. The market five years ago in Thailand was extremely organic and digitally driven, but now we are working with him on branding and on PR. It is a global collaboration.“
Feeding the streaming algorithms
The secret engine behind Believe’s Artist Services model was a heavy reliance on data tracking. Instead of planning a release based on old-school music executive guesswork, Believe used a multitude of digital data points to perfectly sequence their marketing moves and feed the streaming platform algorithms.
“We are very data-driven and powered”, Elsa Bahamonde Bourgain explains. “We use a lot of data to understand the best orchestration of levers on the marketing side. Is it better to launch this kind of media buy campaign, then the influencer campaign, then do the release? Then what is the additional media buy or PR that you need to do at that moment to make sure that you are impacting properly on the audiences and the algorithms that exist in the ecosystem? How do you make sure that TikTok is working well versus what you’re doing on Spotify, Meta, and all the other different platforms? This is one of the big areas where technology and data are working together for us in artist services.“
By combining the analytical precision of a tech company with the localized nuance of a record label, the launch of the Artist Services division permanently rewired the definition of music career success. Believe proved that an independent creator could conquer the global streaming ecosystem while retaining absolute control over their own work.
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Article written by Eamonn Forde. Eamonn Forde is an award-winning music business journalist and author. He writes for The Guardian, Forbes; Music Week, and Music Business Worldwide and several other publications.
The Believe Story
By 2017, the global music business wasn’t just recovering, it was flying. Total revenues jumped 8.1% to reach $17.3 billion, and streaming single-handedly claimed a massive 38.2% of the entire global market.
As the digital landscape grew, the way music found an audience shifted completely. A few years earlier, South Korean artist Psy shattered the internet when his 2012 hit “Gangnam Style” became a global phenomenon. It wasn’t just a hit song; it was a cultural turning point. Its success illustrated how music could now spread internationally through digital platforms and fan participation, extending well beyond traditional broadcast and retail channels.
The growing importance of User-Generated Content (UGC) reflected this shift. During YouTube’s early years, rights holders adopted different approaches to fan-created videos. Believe recognized that internet culture was the ultimate marketing engine, viewing these videos as an opportunity to extend artists’ reach while generating additional revenues. By 2017, what had initially emerged as an organic form of online participation had become an increasingly structured component of digital music marketing and monetisation.
The birth of the 15-second hit
For us at Believe the goal is really to understand how technology is impacting on the artist’s journey every step of the way, from music creation, to music distribution, to music marketing. “You must really understand the impact of technology
Romain Becker
Group Chief Operating Officer
The playground for fan-driven virality evolved dramatically in November 2017 when Chinese tech giant ByteDance acquired a lip-syncing app called Musical.ly for $1 billion, merging it into a brand-new global short-form video platform: TikTok.
Suddenly, the video playbook Believe had spent years refining on YouTube transitioned into hyper-drive. On TikTok, tracks didn’t need a traditional four-minute radio edit to break records; they just needed a catchy 15-second hook that everyday users could use as the soundtrack for dance challenges, comedy skits, or lip-sync trends.
For Believe, navigating this shift meant treating new technology as a clear roadmap for an artist’s career rather than an administrative hurdle.
“For us at Believe the goal is really to understand how technology is impacting on the artist’s journey every step of the way, from music creation, to music distribution, to music marketing,” says Romain Becker. “You must really understand the impact of technology, then embrace it by testing, running some proof of concepts, doing a lot of research, and then offering the artist a solution that will help us to grow their fans, grow their audience, and grow their revenue.“
A different perspective on the value gap
As debates over the economics of digital platforms intensified in 2017, Believe’s own data offered a different perspective on the role of video services in the music business. That year, the company reported that around 20% of its overall global revenue came directly from YouTube. Even more revealing: 45% of that video revenue was generated entirely by everyday fan-made videos using their artists’ music.
These figures suggested that, alongside the concerns expressed by many rights holders about the so-called “value gap,” video platforms could also represent a significant source of audience development and revenue When nurtured and monetized correctly through automated tracking software. Rather than viewing fan-created videos solely as unauthorized uses of copyrighted works, Believe integrated them into its broader digital strategy, using automated identification and monetization tools to generate additional income while extending artists’ reach across online communities.
Short-form video as the new visual handshake
[TikTok] is an additional opportunity to create audiences. We see TikTok much more as a marketing and audience development platform rather than a streaming platform. This is the way we are using TikTok and incorporating TikTok in our strategies.
Romain Becker
Group Chief Operating Officer
When TikTok emerged as a music discovery platform, the industry debated how short-form video would affect music consumption and streaming revenues. Believe approached the platform as a new channel for artist discovery and a hyper-efficient visual handshake to introduce artists to younger demographics and complement more established marketing channels.
As Romain Becker points out, short-form apps don’t compete with traditional music platforms; they act as a massive funnel that feeds them.
“We don’t see TikTok as taking the value out of streaming platforms,” says Romain Becker. “That’s because it’s not a streaming platform and it’s not a replacement for streaming.“
Instead of treating video loops as a product to be sold, Believe integrated them directly into their core fan-building strategies.
“It is an additional opportunity to create audiences”, proposes Romain Becker of the power of TikTok. “We see TikTok much more as a marketing and audience development platform rather than a streaming platform. This is the way we are using TikTok and incorporating TikTok in our strategies.“
By remaining entirely platform-agnostic in 2017, refusing to favor one specific tech platform over another, Believe positioned its roster to capture the upside of internet culture. They proved that in the streaming age, the ultimate financial model wasn’t about trying to control how fans consumed a song, but giving them the freedom to rewrite it.
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Article written by Eamonn Forde. Eamonn Forde is an award-winning music business journalist and author. He writes for The Guardian, Forbes; Music Week, and Music Business Worldwide and several other publications.
The Believe Story
By 2016, there was no longer any doubt: the global recorded music market was on a definitive, long-term upswing. Global revenues climbed 5.9% to $15.7 billion, driven by a massive 60.4% explosion in streaming revenues. Paid streaming subscribers worldwide officially cleared the 112 million mark.
The digital map was also expanding into massive new territories. In China, the launch of Tencent Music in 2016 signaled the birth of a brand-new digital playground that would fundamentally transform music consumption across Asia.
For Believe, this steady economic recovery meant it was time to deploy capital from its recent $60 million funding round. Having already mastered the technology of scale and high-volume distribution, the company set its sights on a deeper, more creative frontier: building an artistic soul. To accelerate this transition, Believe made a major statement in August 2016 by acquiring the legendary, eclectic French independent label naïve.
Founded in 1998, Naïve was celebrated for an incredibly diverse, boundary-pushing roster that spanned electronic music, pop, jazz, and classical masterworks, launching or developing projects for artists like M83, Mirwais, Marianne Faithfull, and Pink Martini. After falling into financial receivership following a bumpy decade, Naïve found a lifeline in Believe. At the time of the deal, Believe made its intentions perfectly clear:
“Believe will put its expertise in the digital business, its global presence in 30 countries, its physical and digital distribution network, and its investment capacity at the service of Naïve with full respect to the editorial line that made the success of Naïve: musical diversity, non-conformity, artists with powerful universes, close relationship to the artists and transparency.“
Injecting Artistic Soul Into Tech
At the time, I said, ‘Believe is too digital. It’s too tech. We need our own editorial imprints. We need artists. We need to A&R this. And to A&R this, artists have to feel they are just not in a digital company, that they are in a record company.
Henri Jamet
Managing Director, France
The acquisition of Naïve, alongside Italian distributor Made In Eataly that same year, marked a massive positioning shift for Believe. Up until this point, the industry largely viewed Believe as a highly efficient tech company, a digital pipe. To truly stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the world’s great music brands, Believe needed to prove it could actively scout, sign, and develop artists from scratch.
Henri Jamet, Managing Director France at Believe, recognized that technology alone couldn’t build a creative culture. He pushed the company to build dedicated, genre-specific editorial imprints under the “AllPoints” umbrella, allowing artists to feel like they were signing to a music company, not a software platform.
“At the time, I said, ‘Believe is too digital. It’s too tech. We need our own editorial imprints. We need artists. We need to A&R this. And to A&R this, artists have to feel they are just not in a digital company, that they are in a record company.’ That’s why I pushed to create organic imprints, as we did with AllPoints, Animal63, Naïve, and so on,” recalls Henri Jamet.
Owning the applause
When we had several successes across multiple genres, it showed the whole industry that we were not only a distributor, but a proper record company.
Henri Jamet
Managing Director, France
Moving heavily into the label business wasn’t just about changing prestige; it fundamentally altered Believe’s commercial upside. When a company only handles the background distribution for a third-party label, it doesn’t own the equity or the historical narrative of that success. By transitioning into a full-fledged record company that signs talent directly, Believe could claim its own victories.
“If you only distribute an artist that is successful, you don’t own the success – the original label owns it,” Jamet argues. “If you’re only distributing an artist, you cannot say, ‘I did this.’ When you have success with an artist you have signed, who you have developed from zero to 100 yourself, that is important.“
By breaking hits across entirely different genres, Believe permanently established its corporate reputation in the marketplace.
“When we had several successes across multiple genres, it showed the whole industry that we were not only a distributor, but a proper record company,” Henri Jamet notes.
The Global Niche Strategy
There are a few market segments where there are not local market. You sign up artists, and then [their] territory of origin represents less than 20% or 30% of [their] revenues. Most of the revenues are international for these segments.
Denis Ladegaillerie
Founder & CEO, Believe.
The Naïve acquisition also laid down the exact corporate blueprint Believe would use to expand its international footprint over the next decade. Instead of trying to buy up mainstream, hyper-localized pop labels, Believe focused on what founder Denis Ladegaillerie calls “international niche labels.”
“It’s really about acquiring capabilities that we don’t have,” Denis Ladegaillerie explains. “This is what we call international niche labels.“
These niche genres such as electronic music, alternative rock, and heavy metal possess a unique economic superpower in the streaming era: their audiences are entirely borderless. A specialized metal or electronic artist might find that their home country only accounts for a tiny fraction of their listener base, while the remaining 80% is scattered globally across streaming playlists.
“There are a few market segments where there are not local markets,” Denis Ladegaillerie says. “You sign up artists, and then the territory of origin of the artist represents less than 20% or 30% of the revenues of the artists. Most of the revenues are international for these segments. That’s why we’re also looking at acquisitions in these specific market segments.”
By integrating Naïve’s prestigious catalogue into Believe’s global digital network, the company proved it could breathe new commercial life into legacy art.
“In the last five years, we acquired a lot of shares in independent labels and are now integrating them”, Henri Jamet explains, noting how this 2016 framework paved the way for future major partnerships with global style leaders like Tôt ou Tard and Nuclear Blast.
Turning data into a creative compass
As Believe rapidly scaled its label operations, handling this massive influx of global music required an entirely new approach to information. In 2016, the company launched DataMusic, a specialized analytics platform engineered to hand deep backend insights directly back to artists and labels.
This wasn’t just a continuation of Believe’s obsession with financial transparency; it was about using data as a daily marketing compass. In the streaming age, knowing exactly who is listening, where they are skipping a track, and which playlist is driving traffic allows an independent artist to make precise, calculated decisions about their next tour stop or video drop. By putting these high-level insights directly into the hands of the creators, Believe proved that data wasn’t a corporate secret to be guarded, but a basic creative right.
By the close of 2016, Believe had brought together another essential element of its operating model. Alongside technology, artist services and global infrastructure, editorial expertise and data had become integral to how the company identified, developed and supported artists in the streaming era.
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Article written by Eamonn Forde. Eamonn Forde is an award-winning music business journalist and author. He writes for The Guardian, Forbes; Music Week, and Music Business Worldwide and several other publications.
The Believe Story
By 2015, the music industry was finally smiling again. After a brutal, fifteen-year downward spiral following the turn of the millennium, global recorded music revenues grew 3.2% to $15 billion. The real milestone? Digital music revenue officially overtook physical sales ($6.7 billion vs $5.8 billion), propelled by a massive 45.2% explosion in streaming that brought the global total of paid subscribers to 68 million.
The industry was reorganizing itself around this digital resurgence. In the summer of 2015, the IFPI standardized “Global Release Friday,” aligning music launches on the exact same day worldwide to flatten old physical territory gaps. By June, Apple Music arrived to challenge Spotify, racking up 6.5 million users by October, and by December, even The Beatles finally relented, uploading their catalogue to streaming platforms.
In the middle of this revitalized landscape, Believe was executing its own master plan. To truly lead the digital age, you couldn’t just work with established labels; you had to reach the massive wave of independent, Do-It-Yourself (DIY) creators recording hits in their bedrooms. In April 2015, already operating across 29 markets, Believe made its biggest power move yet: acquiring TuneCore, the powerhouse digital music distribution and music publishing administration platform for independent artists.
“The success of TuneCore, its deep commitment to independent artists, and the natural synergy between our services for artists, make this partnership a powerful force to propel artists’ growth”, said Denis Ladegaillerie at the time of the deal. “There is a tremendous opportunity for TuneCore and Believe to champion independent artists and their entrepreneurship, and together our focus will be to provide the best comprehensive services to a wider range of musicians around the world.“
Constructing the artist pyramid
With TuneCore, we wanted to address the DIY market. We did not have the capabilities to do that. We felt it was better for us to acquire these capabilities.
Denis Ladegaillerie
Founder & CEO, Believe.
The TuneCore union allowed Believe to finally secure the absolute base of its global talent pipeline. While the company had experimented with its own home-grown DIY service, Zimbalam, back in 2008, conquering the DIY market on a truly global, automated scale required a completely different level of technological infrastructure. Instead of trying to build an automated high-volume machine from scratch, Believe bought the absolute best in class.
“With TuneCore, we wanted to address the DIY market,” Denis Ladegaillerie reflects. We did not have the capabilities to do that. We felt it was better for us to acquire these capabilities.“
This acquisition unlocked a powerful, tiered business model where Believe could support over a million artists with customized solutions as their careers evolved.
“At the base, we have TuneCore, then Artist and Label Distribution in the middle, and then we have our artist services at the top,” explains Gideon Mountford. “We now have over a million artists in our ecosystem, and they are at different stages of their development.“
Flexible Contracts for a New Era of Success
In the modern landscape, where hundreds of thousands of new tracks drop onto platforms daily, there is no one-size-fits-all roadmap to hitting the charts. Success requires a dynamic structure that bends to the needs of the individual artist.
“The shape of success is different today”, notes Henri Jamet, Managing Director France at Believe. “Now you have hundreds of thousands of tracks every day on platforms, so success is having the proper strategy adapted to your segment and your profile. This is what we can propose, from TuneCore to an artist deal, from TuneCore to a distribution deal, from TuneCore to a licensing deal.“
Because TuneCore acts as an internal incubator, contracts can seamlessly shift as an act gains traction.
“We can propose and make your contract evolve, conscious of your strategy, your journey, and your timing,” notes Henri Jamet.
The Foothold in Japan
TuneCore is ahead of all the other independent labels in the [Japanese] market. We were present in Japan through our subsidiary TuneCore […]The Believe brand is new in the market. It’s only three years old because, before that, TuneCore was a more powerful brand.
Sylvain Delange
President, APAC
TuneCore is ahead of all the other independent labels in the [Japanese] market. We were present in Japan through our subsidiary TuneCore […]The Believe brand is new in the market. It’s only three years old because, before that, TuneCore was a more powerful brand.
This structural framework proved to be Believe’s secret weapon when expanding into Japan, the second-largest music market in the world. When Believe officially established its office in Tokyo in October 2023, TuneCore had already been running autonomously on the ground for years, giving the parent company an instant competitive edge.
“We had TuneCore and we had the blueprint,” says Romain Vivien of the expansion into Japan. “We had the technology and the interface as well, something we progressively built after the TuneCore acquisition in 2015. On one hand, it was leveraging our artist services business and leveraging the TuneCore artist community, so we could upsell them. We built the first 100% hip-hop dedicated label in Playcode in early 2024. The first signings to Playcode came from TuneCore.“
Today, TuneCore sits at number three in digital market share in Japan.
“TuneCore is ahead of all the other independent labels in the market,” says Sylvain Delange. “We were present in Japan through our subsidiary TuneCore which has been operating autonomously there for many years. The Believe brand is new in the market. It’s only three years old because, before that, TuneCore was a more powerful brand – and it continues to be a more powerful brand today – than Believe was. It’s changing fast, but that’s the situation today. The Believe traditional model is more recent, but the presence of Believe through TuneCore runs a lot deeper than that.“
This grassroots ecosystem proved especially dominant in the exploding domestic Japanese hip-hop scene.
“The reason we launched Playcode in Japan was thanks to TuneCore,” Sylvain Delange explains. “The reality is that TuneCore today is by far the biggest hip-hop ecosystem in Japan. A large majority of hip-hop artists transit through TuneCore in one way or another, work with TuneCore in one way or another, or collaborate with TuneCore in one way or another.“
Unearthing regional hits in India
A similar story played out in India. Rather than spending millions trying to force their way into the heavily centralized, film-dominated world of Bollywood from day one, Believe started using TuneCore in 2020 to discover hyper-localized, independent pop talent that the major labels completely missed.
“There were a couple of artists we signed directly from TuneCore to artist services,” says Vivek Raina, the Managing Director of India at Believe. “Primarily the two key artist markets were Punjabi and Hindi pop. We had enough scalable opportunities across hundreds of artists that we sign on TuneCore, and every year we pick up two, three or four artists who we can offer a high level of services. We have been doing this consistently with TuneCore.“
Everybody Starts at Zero
If you take Ed Sheeran, Lizzo, Angèle in France, Chance The Rapper and many, many others, they all started on TuneCore. Before being global stars, they all started on TuneCore. Every artist starts at the bottom and needs a partner to help them grow.
Romain Vivien
Global Head of Music & President, Europe
The underlying philosophy is that every global superstar has to start somewhere. TuneCore exists to ensure that an artist at the absolute beginning of their journey has the exact same distribution access as a major label star.
“If you take Ed Sheeran, Lizzo, Angèle in France, Chance The Rapper and many, many others, they all started on TuneCore”, Romain Vivien points out. “Before being global stars, they all started on TuneCore. Every artist starts at the bottom and needs a partner to help them grow and Tunecore is a fantastic platform and model to do just that.”
Because artists need to shift dramatically once they move past that zero level, Believe engineered the pyramid to be fluid, allowing acts to move seamlessly up and down between distribution and services.
Propelling the next generation
To add extra fuel to this pipeline, a few years later the company launched the TuneCore Accelerator Program, designed to inject marketing support and expert career management directly into the DIY landscape.
“We wanted to develop a program where we were starting to deliver additional services to the artists that were in this phase of needing additional and extra mile support, even in the DIY landscape,” says Elsa Bahamonde Bourgain. “We started adding these additional elements, with marketing support, with special experts helping them on how to manage their time, their career, and their projects.“
Ultimately, this program connects the dots across the entire global business.
“What we have done, very quickly, is to create this link with all the other business lines, from publishing to artist services, to Believe Label and Artist Services,” adds Elsa Bahamonde Bourgain. “What we do with artists is to propose to them to move from TuneCore to the other types of services that we’re offering to make sure that we can continue the mission that we have as Believe, which is to be one global artist development company. We make sure that we are the one proposing to the artist, when we consider it is the best moment, how to move to the different businesses.“
By the close of 2015, with TuneCore pulling in $36 million in Q1 alone and expanding its flag to the UK market; the acquisition proved to be a masterclass in full-stack architecture.
This acquisition completed another key layer of Believe’s artist development model. By connecting self-distribution, label and artist services within a single ecosystem, the company was able to support artists throughout their careers while adapting its services as their needs evolved.
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Article written by Eamonn Forde. Eamonn Forde is an award-winning music business journalist and author. He writes for The Guardian, Forbes; Music Week, and Music Business Worldwide and several other publications.
The Believe Story
The year 2014 marked a pivotal moment for the music business. Streaming was growing at a breathless pace: Spotify surpassed 10 million paying subscribers, and the UK charts began incorporating digital streams toward their official weekly rankings, reflecting changing listening habits. At the same time, the industry was still debating what this transformation would mean for the long-term economics of recorded music.
Questions surrounding digital ownership, streaming economics and artist remuneration remained unresolved, and two major news stories illustrated those tensions. The first came in September, when Apple and the rock band U2 automatically added Songs of Innocence to more than 500 million iTunes accounts as part of a promotional campaign. Although conceived as an unprecedented album launch, the initiative generated widespread criticism from users who objected to receiving music they had not chosen to download, highlighting changing expectations around ownership and user control in the digital era.
The second came in November, when Taylor Swift withdrew her catalogue from Spotify. Swift argued that music should retain its economic value and questioned whether ad-supported streaming provided adequate compensation for artists, famously saying that “valuable things should be paid for”. Her decision became one of the defining moments in the broader debate over the economics of streaming, prompting discussion across the music industry about how subscription and free-tier models should coexist.
Different approaches to platform economics
As debates over the economics of streaming intensified in 2014, Believe adopted a different approach to the emerging relationship between music companies and digital platforms. While many rights holders focused on the so-called “value gap” – the perceived difference between the scale of online music consumption and the revenues generated from it – Believe placed greater emphasis on the long-term growth potential of streaming and advertising-supported platforms.
These differing perspectives became particularly visible when YouTube was preparing to launch its paid subscription music service. At the time, it was common for major record companies to negotiate substantial upfront advances as part of their licensing agreements with digital services, alongside ongoing royalty payments. Believe instead evaluated the proposed commercial terms by comparing them with its existing agreements with platforms including Spotify, Deezer and Rdio.
After analysing royalty statements and contractual terms across those services, Believe concluded that YouTube’s proposed payout rates were broadly consistent with prevailing market conditions. Rather than seeking additional upfront payments, the company chose to support a licensing model based primarily on ongoing usage, and communicated its reasoning directly and transparently to clients in a memorandum circulated in June 2014:
“From a detailed analysis of our current agreements with Deezer, Spotify and Rdio, as well as statements received from those services in the past year, our conclusion is that the rate offered by YouTube on the YouTube Subscription service is aligned on current market rates.“
Believe’s approach reflected a broader conviction that audience growth and monetisation would increasingly be driven by the scale of engagement on digital platforms. Its collaboration with Queen illustrated this strategy. Working closely with the band’s management, Believe expanded Queen’s YouTube presence through channel optimisation, metadata management, catalogue availability and new video formats, contributing to sustained audience growth and the channel surpassing one million subscribers by early 2014.
“You had a situation in 2013 and 2014 where the value gap discussion was at its height, and yet we were working with the band who were making all of their catalogue available on YouTube,” recalls Gideon Mountford, Believe’s Global Head of Video at the time. “That was unheard of at that time. The band and the management said, ‘Let’s create lyric videos for every single track. Let’s create long-form videos. Let’s really embrace this platform, because we know that this is where young people are consuming content. We need to be relevant to young people.’ And so we were able to create this great opportunity.“
Build locally, connect globally
As soon as you operate in the top 10 or 20 markets, suddenly you have a global business […] That business needs to invest in helping local artists develop. We wanted to build locally, while connecting globally.
Romain Vivien
Global Head of Music & President, Europe
As digital platforms like Spotify, Apple, and YouTube became increasingly global, international scale became an important factor in securing visibility and editorial support for artists across streaming services. Believe recognized that independent artists and labels would also need access to that scale. The company’s international expansion was therefore designed to combine global reach with strong local market presence.
Rather than relying primarily on the international circulation of a limited number of global releases, Believe invested in local teams and artist development across its territories, using its expanding territory network to protect and elevate local talent inside their own hometown markets. By securing a top-three market position in many of the world’s key music markets, Believe gained the scale and relationships needed to engage directly with global digital services while representing the interests of independent artists and labels across diverse local music ecosystems.
“As soon as you operate in the top 10 or 20 markets, suddenly you have a global business,” explains Romain Vivien. “First and foremost, that business needs to invest in helping local artists develop. We wanted to build locally, while connecting globally. Our presence in those markets was very important.“
By building up massive local rosters, Believe earned a permanent seat at the table with the world’s biggest digital companies.
“A local and global presence, built through market share and a relevant portfolio of artists and labels, puts you in a very good position to engage with Spotify, Deezer and the other key digital services,” Romain Vivien continues. “To have those conversations, you need a local presence and a strong local roster. That’s how you connect artists with audiences.”
The all-in-one financial cushion
During the physical era, recorded music sales remained the primary source of revenue for most record companies. As the industry transitioned toward streaming, the economics of artist development increasingly encouraged a broader range of complementary services and revenue streams.
To thrive in the streaming age, Believe’s response was to support a more integrated artist services model. Alongside digital distribution, the company invested in full-service labels that handled every single financial aspect of an artist’s career, including music publishing, merchandising and live activities. This enabled both artists and labels to bring together multiple aspects of career development within a single partnership.
Diversifying revenue streams also created greater flexibility to fund artist development over the longer term.
“Being 360 makes a lot of sense,” Romain Vivien notes. “If you look at most of the labels we have invested in, we took a share in, or we bought in France, they’re all 360-degree businesses. They have publishing. They have live. That allows us to multiply the conversation with the artists, to retain them, to provide a higher level of services and to monetise. When we invest, we monetise on two or three business lines and two or three revenue streams. It makes a lot of sense, and also it gives you more capacity to invest, to bring those artists to the top.“
Owning the rights: audio recordings vs. songwriting
Moving from distribution to label and artist services and from access to success means we also need to own IP and catalogue, because that’s what creates long-term value. This will also give us something which is very important: control, and the ability to invest over time and make long-term decisions.
Romain Vivien
Global Head of Music & President, Europe
The final pillar of Believe’s 2014 economic blueprint was a massive push to buy up music catalogues, which means the permanent legal ownership of past hit songs. Every single track in existence contains two completely separate, distinct legal copyrights. There is the master right, which is ownership of the specific sound recording (the actual audio file you hear when you press play on a streaming platform). Then there is the publishing right, which is ownership of the underlying musical composition (the written lyrics, melody, and chords created by the songwriter).
Traditionally, these rights are split across completely separate, competing corporations, making it an administrative nightmare to clear a song for a global streaming campaign, a movie, or a commercial. Believe set out to break this fragmentation by buying catalogues where they could control both sets of rights under one roof, giving them total operational freedom and long-term financial control over their investments.
“We are willing to continue investing around €100 million in M&A, investing into labels or buying catalogue,” says Romain Vivien of a strategy whose foundations were already taking shape in 2014. “Moving from distribution to label and artist services and from access to success means we also need to own IP and catalogue, because that’s what creates long-term value. This will also give us something which is very important: control, and the ability to invest over time and make long-term decisions. Having control, with consent and transparency from and to the artists, specifically on both sides of the rights, recording and publishing, allows us to have better conversation, develop more licensing opportunities and, ultimately, create more value for the artists and producers.“
By the close of 2014, as streaming revenues climbed 39% to hit $1.57 billion globally, the path forward was clear. Believe had added another layer to its modem music model: combining technology, diversified revenue, stream-by-stream transparency, and local control into an integrated platform designed to support artists over the long term.
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Article written by Eamonn Forde. Eamonn Forde is an award-winning music business journalist and author. He writes for The Guardian, Forbes; Music Week, and Music Business Worldwide and several other publications.
The Believe Story
The global music narrative underwent a dramatic format shift in 2013. According to data from the IFPI, revenue from digital downloads dipped by 2.1% to $3.93 billion, while subscription streaming income exploded by a staggering 51%, crossing the billion-dollar threshold at $1.11 billion. Combined, ad-funded and subscription streaming claimed 27% of all recorded music revenue worldwide.
But the real story of 2013 wasn’t just about how people listened; it was about where they listened. For years, Western music bodies had written off China as a market completely lost to piracy. Digital distribution, however, was quietly proving it could build a legitimate, thriving ecosystem in the world’s most populous nation. The launch of NetEase Cloud Music in April 2013 served as a loud, undeniable signal: Asia was ready to become a premier global music powerhouse.
Having already established strong footprints across mainland Europe, the UK, and Canada, Believe identified the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region as its next great frontier. It was time to execute a rapid, high-stakes expansion.
Slipstreaming Apple into Southeast Asia
To spearhead this ambitious campaign, Sylvain Delange joined Believe in early 2013 to orchestrate the company’s Asian expansion plans. Operating initially from France, Believe adopted a clever “slipstream” strategy, partnering closely with Apple as the tech giant rolled its iTunes Music Store out across new territories.
They already started operating in Japan, but they launched in Southeast Asia and were looking for someone to help gather Indonesian catalogue, so the very first country we went into was Indonesia.”
Sylvain Delange
President, APAC
Apple possessed the global retail architecture, but they lacked the localized relationship networks required to unlock regional music scenes. That was Believe’s exact cue.
“Apple almost never does any direct licensing with local record labels, because it requires specific knowledge and connections with the local music ecosystem”, Sylvain Delange explains. “So they always relied on third-party partners. That’s where we came into place. We organised the first few trips with Denis, our CEO, in Southeast Asia. The first trip we did was to Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore. Within six months in 2013, we started operating in Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and India.“
The strategic crossroads of Singapore
This lightning-fast rollout served as a masterclass in market entry. While Believe would eventually plant its regional headquarters in Singapore in 2020, the logistical and relational seeds of that hub were firmly planted during the 2013 blitz.
Singapore is very conveniently located at the crossroads in Asia, almost equal distance between Japan and India, and with easy access to Southeast Asia, China and beyond. t’s a very business-friendly environment. Plus all our natural counterparts have their headquarters there, YouTube, Spotify, Apple, TikTok. My DSP counterparts at a regional leadership level all sit in the same city. That’s the benefit of being located in Singapore, where we eventually opened our main office for the zone.”
Sylvain Delange
President, APAC
Believe’s grassroots strategy in emerging markets, centered on local artist development and gradual expansion of local teams, reflected a different emphasis from approaches that had traditionally focused more strongly on the international circulation of established repertoire. Believe saw these markets as vibrant, self-sustaining ecosystems.
“It’s not that the majors have not been active in those markets, but it was to a much lesser extent than they’d been in Western markets”, Sylvain Delange argues. “The reality is that the majors have always been operating in those markets as an extension of their international repertoire, really to push their international music there. Some of them had some local presence. I’m not saying that they never really developed local artists, but I wouldn’t say it was among their top priorities at the time.”
Digitising legend: the cultural salvage mission
Believe recognised that the beating heart of these musical landscapes belonged to the independent community. The talent was there, but it was structurally marooned.
“The majority of the music ecosystem and the local artists were developed by local labels”, notes Sylvain Delange. “That was true in China, Japan, Indonesia, Thailand and India.“
The immediate challenge for Believe wasn’t marketing; it was addressing a vast digitisation gap. Entire generations of recordings were sitting on analog tapes, completely invisible to the internet.
“A lot of the catalogues were not even available on digital platforms, and some of them were never even digitised in the first place”, Sylvain Delange says. “Our first step was to identify where those catalogues were, which ones had already been digitised and made available, and which ones had not. What were the most legendary or most established catalogues that we knew were likely going to find fans on platforms? And how quickly could we get there and help those labels digitise and make their music available?“
The lifesaver called YouTube
Because digital retail was so nascent across the region, local labels had incredibly modest expectations. Believe had to step in as an educator, painting a pict.ure of where consumption was heading while managing the realities of the ground.
Streaming was not yet a thing and downloads were niche at best.It was in its early stages. The work was essentially driven towards Apple. Very quickly it started to be driven to YouTube, which was really the first at-scale platform that really made a difference in the region in terms of access to music. And even there, music was not properly monetised by a lot of labels. The strategy was to really focus on those catalogues, that domestic content that had never been made available, or that was not properly monetised on platforms so that we could help them there.”
Sylvain Delange
President, APAC
While Western music executives spent 2012 and 2013 obsessing over the “value gap” and treating video platforms with litigious suspicion, Asian independent labels viewed the medium through a completely different financial lens.
The Asian labels didn’t have the luxury to complain about how low YouTube was paying, because at least they were getting paid, Sylvain Delange says point-blank. It was not the case before. YouTube was a true game-changer and, I would say, a lifesaver for the music industry for ten years. That’s what really helped to maintain a lot of labels and kept a lot of the music industry afloat. In a context where there was no other alternative, and there were no other ways of making money around music.
Educating the algorithms
By operating as an active distribution and artist development partner, rather than solely as a digital distributor, Believe managed to build a holistic, multi-platform view of the Asian music market.
“It gives you a very deep understanding of what type of content works, what types of artists and what genres of music are getting popular, what ones are progressing, what ones are regressing, and which era in the music ecosystem is actually getting traction”, Sylvain Delange argues. “You get to see it across platforms. It gives you a unique view and it helps to educate you much faster on the market than anybody else.”
To build this deep, localized knowledge base, Believe intentionally avoided cherry-picking specific commercial niches. They signed everything.
“We signed traditional content, old-school content, new up-and-coming content, regional content, urban content: pretty much everything which really helped us have a very deep understanding of each ecosystem.”
This massive repository of local data allowed Believe to actively educate the global streaming platforms themselves on how to cater to their own audiences.
“We were the ones who told Spotify that they should start building regional music playlists in Indonesia because they were missing a big chunk of the audience there”, Sylvain Delange explains. “The platform was not relevant enough for the audience if they were not showcasing this content.“
The Ultimate Domestic Flip
This long-term bet on regional authenticity completely rewired the global music map. Looking back from 2026, the early legwork of 2013 has yielded a staggering competitive advantage.
“I was looking at the IFPI charts in Southeast Asia this morning”, Sylvain Delange notes in April 2026. “Half of the artists in the Indonesia top 20 are Believe artists. Half of the artists in Thailand are Believe artists. It’s the same in many other countries. I’m talking about Believe artists that we have developed in-house with our own artist development capacity. We have really built a fully fledged artist development capacity.“
Ultimately, Believe’s legacy in the region is measured by a fundamental shift in economic and cultural equity, transforming local markets from passive consumers of international music into dominant, self-sustaining ecosystems.
“We gave access to a lot of labels and gave a lot of artists a stream of revenues that simply did not exist before, and we contributed to increasing the visibility of those artists on DSPs”, Sylvain Delange says. “When we entered Indonesia and Thailand, music consumption on platforms like Spotify was 30% domestic and 70% international. Today, it’s the opposite. In Thailand and Indonesia today, 60% of the music consumed on the platform is actually domestic. In a big part, this is thanks to Believe. We flipped the value creation from a world where the majority of the value gets captured by international players, and essentially flows back into the pockets of international artists, to a model where the majority of those revenues actually flow back into the pockets of domestic artists and domestic labels. To me, this is a very strong impact testimonial of how we’re really creating access.“
By aligning their business with the true value of local communities, Believe constructed a permanent launchpad for regional success.
“We have developed tools, capabilities, expertise, and teams that now are able to master true artist development in all of those markets”, Sylvain Delange says. “We have created new superstars. Some artists that essentially started as independent, self-produced artists, sometimes bedroom producers, have become some of the top artists in the market.“
As digital music expanded beyond its Western strongholds, Believe’s experience in Asia illustrated the growing importance of locally developed ecosystems in shaping the next phase of the global music industry.
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Article written by Eamonn Forde. Eamonn Forde is an award-winning music business journalist and author. He writes for The Guardian, Forbes; Music Week, and Music Business Worldwide and several other publications.