Before Marquise Lightfoot founded RTHM, he had already experienced several sides of the independent music business.
Releasing music under the stage name Franchise TYG, Lightfoot entered the industry as an independent recording artist in 2018. Within two years, his music reached the Billboard charts, showing that independent artists could build commercially active catalogs outside the traditional major-label system.
The achievement was significant, but it also exposed a different reality.
Like many independent artists, Lightfoot owned music that generated recurring royalty income while still facing the day-to-day challenge of funding growth. Recording, marketing and touring required capital today, while royalty payments often arrived months later.
Receiving his own royalty advance in 2021 changed how he viewed the business.
“It was the first time I realized music wasn’t just something you created. It was an asset that could finance the next stage of your career.”
Rather than simply continue making music, Lightfoot began studying how royalty transactions were originated, valued and structured.
Beginning in 2022, he began originating royalty transactions between independent artists and established royalty finance companies, helping creators access potential capital from existing music catalogs while learning the mechanics behind underwriting, valuation and music-backed transactions.
In 2023, he founded STRM, pronounced “stream,” a royalty brokerage and music-finance consultancy that evolved beyond artist advisory work.
While STRM advised artists, managers and rights holders seeking to monetize their catalogs, it also worked alongside royalty investment firms, distributors and institutional buyers to originate transactions, facilitate acquisitions, source opportunities and help complete royalty purchases.
Operating between both buyers and sellers gave the company a perspective into how music rights were valued, negotiated and acquired throughout the independent music industry.
As STRM grew, one pattern became increasingly visible.
Independent artists had become more structured businesses. Streaming platforms created recurring, measurable cash flow, yet many creators and independent labels still lacked access to financial infrastructure built specifically for music assets.
STRM could educate clients, structure transactions and connect both sides of the market, but each deal ultimately depended on another institution’s underwriting standards, available capital and investment strategy.
Rather than continue building within someone else’s platform, Lightfoot decided to build one of his own. That decision became RTHM Fund and RTHM Distribution.
Launched in 2025, RTHM focuses on royalty finance, catalog acquisitions and revenue-backed capital solutions for independent rights holders.
Unlike traditional commercial lending, many royalty transactions involve purchasing a defined portion of an artist’s future royalty income or acquiring royalty-producing assets outright. Rather than relying on fixed monthly payments, the structure may allow artists and rights holders to access capital from music that is already generating measurable revenue.
According to the company, within its first seven months, RTHM reviewed more than 400 royalty financing and catalog acquisition opportunities representing tens of millions of dollars in potential transaction value while originating, purchasing and facilitating transactions involving millions of dollars in artist royalty rights.
Alongside the fund, RTHM Distribution was established as an invitation-only distribution platform serving independent artists, labels and rights holders.
Like many modern music distributors, RTHM participates in the success of the music it distributes through an agreed share of royalty revenue, aligning the company’s interests with those of its clients while providing global distribution, royalty reporting and catalog management.
Since launch, RTHM Distribution has delivered more than 1,000 releases across digital streaming platforms. Beyond delivering music worldwide, the platform serves as an origination channel for the broader RTHM ecosystem. Artists who initially distribute through RTHM may later pursue royalty financing or catalog transactions, while financing clients may choose to distribute future releases through the platform.
The businesses were designed to complement one another.
Distribution helps artists release music, collect royalties and build catalogs. The fund enables those same catalogs to be evaluated as potential financeable assets through royalty purchases, advances and structured transactions. Together, the two businesses allow RTHM to support artists, producers, labels and distributors throughout the lifecycle of their catalogs rather than through a single transaction.
The opportunity extends beyond individual artists.
Streaming has transformed music into a growing recurring revenue asset class, creating an expanding market for royalty transactions. While institutional capital has increasingly entered music over the past decade, much of it has focused on acquiring large legacy catalogs and established rights holders.
RTHM has positioned itself differently.
Rather than concentrating exclusively on headline-grabbing acquisitions, the company focuses on the independent market, where many artists, producers, labels and distributors own royalty-generating catalogs but may lack access to specialized financial infrastructure.
The company’s newest initiative, the RTHM B2B Royalty Fund, extends that philosophy further.
Instead of serving only artists directly, the platform enables independent labels, distributors and music companies to offer royalty advances, catalog transactions and other revenue-backed financing solutions under their own brands using RTHM’s underwriting, capital and transaction infrastructure.
Each new partnership can expand the ecosystem while allowing existing music businesses to compete with larger institutions without building their own finance operations from the ground up.
Lightfoot believes the next evolution of the independent music business will depend not only on better distribution or better marketing, but on better financial infrastructure.
His own career reflects that evolution.
He entered the industry as an independent artist. He became a royalty recipient, then a transaction originator, consultant and intermediary before ultimately founding a company built to help finance the next generation of independent rights holders.
Today, RTHM is positioning itself as more than a royalty fund or distribution company. It is working to build financial infrastructure for the independent music economy.
