Investor Who Led Kobalt Acquisition Launches Artist Advance Platform

Veteran music investor and former Francisco Partners private equity executive Matt Spetzler unveiled a new financing platform for artist advances called Pipeline, backed by his investment fund Jamen Capital.

Launching with more than $200 million in fundraising, Pipeline is a business-to-business lender aiming to offer “simpler, more flexible and advantageous deal terms” than competitors by lending against the performance, release schedules, catalogs and artist rosters of whole groups of indie labels and distributors, rather than of individiual companies. Pipeline says this reduces its risk, allowing it to offer compelling terms and a faster turnaround. Pipeline currently works with labels and distributors and aims to expand to publishers and performing rights organizations later this year.

Having enough capital to keep rising stars and high-performing artists is a growing problem for indie music companies, as more artists seek short-term distribution deals, through which they retain ownership of their work and keep the majority of the income their music generates. 

Independent labels and distributors represented 46.7% of the global recorded music market in 2023, up from 34.4% in 2015, according to the press release announcing Pipeline.

The rise of distribution deals reflects growing demand for independent music companies’ services. However, apart from a handful of boutique music lenders, including beatBread and Sound Royalties, large banks and investors have yet to open the financial spigot, and indie distributors like Stem have lost artists to distributors that offered bigger advances. Stem was bought by Concord, one of the industry’s biggest music companies after the three majors, in March 2025.

“Independent music companies control some of the best and most valuable IP in the industry, but they often lack efficient, affordable ways to unlock that value,” Spetzler, co-founder and executive chairman of Pipeline and founding partner of Jamen Capital, said in a statement.

“Pipeline was built to [provide] accessible and flexible capital, as well as IP analytics and forecasting tools that allow independent businesses to have the resources to grow and scale,” he continued. “We want to help companies unlock the value of their IP and compete on having the best artists, not the biggest checkbook.”

Pipeline is the first music and creator-focused company launched by Jamen Capital, an investment fund Spetzler created roughly a year ago. Prior to Jamen, Spetzler was a partner and co-head of Europe for private equity firm Francisco Partners, leading its acquisitions of Kobalt, Native Instruments and Muse Group. According to the release, Spetzler has closed 10 transactions worth more than $5 billion combined over the past five years and currently sits on the boards of Kobalt, Sountrack, Recognition Music Group and Muse Group.

Pipeline was advised by Raine and Moore & Van Allen on its launch and fundraise.