A major shake-up has arrived in the world of sync. Catalog is a new end-to-end music licensing marketplace designed to return artistic integrity (and revenue) to musicians shut out by the billion-dollar stock music economy.
Described by its creators as “the creative’s ultimate sync record shop,” Catalog offers an alternative to the $1.3 billion royalty-free market dominated by anonymous, mass-produced tracks. Instead, the platform launches with more than 30,000 curated songs from 1,800 artists and 60 influential independent labels, including !K7, Beggars Group, Domino, Ninja Tune, Warp, Mute Song, Erased Tapes, City Slang and Partisan Records.
The offering spans heritage acts, cult innovators, and contemporary trailblazers: from Laurent Garnier and krautrock legends NEU! to Belle and Sebastian, Ólafur Arnalds, Yves Tumor, Marie Davidson and Ela Minus. It also includes rare catalogue material such as Nigerian funk pioneer Steve Monite and CAM Sugar’s cinematic 'Red Light Disco' archive.
For Catalog founder Frederic Schindler, AIM’s 2025 Music Supervisor of the Year, the platform is a response to two decades of watching independent artists lose out. “A broken system has funnelled billions into ghost-library catalogues,” he says. “The solution isn’t to abandon artistry for convenience; it’s to remove the friction. Catalog lets creatives choose music they love and ensures artists are paid at the speed of culture.”
That frictionless workflow is at the heart of the platform. Using audio similarity search, advanced filtering and “editorial” human-guided discovery, users can identify the right track in minutes. Catalog’s proprietary Sync Smart Pricing™ provides transparent, data-informed valuations. At the same time, complex licensing agreements, often involving multiple rights holders, are auto-generated and authenticated on the blockchain, reducing an industry-standard process from months to mere hours.
During its private BETA, Catalog was tested on high-pressure briefs, including the Hermès Men’s 2026 runway show, for which it sourced a replacement track in under 24 hours.
With a 200-strong waitlist of supervisors already in place, Catalog is now opening membership to creatives across the US, Canada, Mexico, the UK and Europe.
More information is available at catalog.ac.
