The acquisitive streak of Concord continues to surge in 2025, with the Nashville-headquartered independent music company now plunging into the direct distribution business.
On Monday (March 24), Concord confirmed that it has acquired Stem Distribution, bringing the platform – known for its data-driven dashboard and payment tools for independent artists – under the Concord Label Group umbrella.
MBW’s sources told us earlier this month that Concord was buying the distribution platform, suggesting a high eight-figure dollar deal somewhere above $50 million.
Concord has since confirmed, that as well as buying Stem, it’s making an additional investment into Tone, a royalty accounting and financial tools platform launched by Stem’s management team in 2023. Tone is being spun off and will operate as an independent/standalone business going forward.
Stem Distribution itself will now operate as a “separate division” within Concord Label Group. As a subsidiary of Concord, Stem will be led by Milana Lewis (founder and CEO), and President Kristin Graziani.
The acquisition is a significant move for both companies.
Concord gains a foothold in direct artist distribution, adding to its already expansive portfolio spanning publishing, recorded music, theatrical works, and film/TV.
Meanwhile, Stem secures the backing of an independent music industry powerhouse.
Los Angeles-headquartered Stem, founded in 2015, has built a reputation for its personalized distribution model, artist-development services, and technology-driven approach.
The company has powered releases from artists including Brent Faiyaz and Chappell Roan, and has been recognized multiple times by Fast Company as one of the “Most Innovative Companies.”
This acquisition follows a period of significant activity for Concord, which raised $850 million through an Asset-Backed Securities transaction in late 2024 to fuel “strategic growth and acquisition[s]”.
The company also recently spent $217.3 million on acquiring rights to Daddy Yankee’s catalog.
Below, in an exclusive interview, MBW speaks with Tom Becci, Chief Executive of Concord Label Group, and Milana Lewis, founder and CEO of Stem, about the strategic thinking behind the deal, and Stem’s future under Concord ownership…
The deal has now closed between Concord and Stem. Tom, from Concord’s side, why acquire Stem?
Tom Becci: I’ve known Milana since 2017, and I’ve always admired the company she’s built, with its focus on independent artists and labels. As the business has evolved over the last few years, more and more artists want to be independent and don’t necessarily want to be tied to a full-service record label from day one.
“Stem has an incredible track record of attracting superstar talent, and for Concord, it creates the opportunity to work with artists we wouldn’t have connected with in the past.”
tom Becci
This acquisition gives us the opportunity to enter the ever-expanding indie distribution space.
Stem has an incredible track record of attracting superstar talent, and for Concord, it creates the opportunity to work with artists we wouldn’t have connected with in the past because we didn’t have the deal structures they were looking for. It expands our portfolio to attract more talent to work with us at Concord.
Milana, what made Concord an appealing company for Stem to partner with?
Milana Lewis: Tom and I [met] when he was at Red Light Management. In the early days of Stem, we were very lucky to get the backing of Red Light and many of their partners. Tom’s always been a great advocate and someone who got to see what we could do from the outside.
As a growing distribution business, we’ve always aspired to become one of the largest independent music companies. The huge gap for us has been our ability to retain clients that we launch because of our capital constraints.
We’ve very deliberately assembled the pieces of the machine that we believe artists need today, which looks different than the way major music companies currently service artists. We got it right – we’ve launched the careers of some of the biggest independent artists and supported managers who started record labels around them.
“The financial backing is critical, but what also became valuable was the global footprint that Concord makes available for our artists.”
Milana Lewis
We’ve always been able to attract them because of our agile, tech-forward offering with flexible and fair deal terms. But it always became a problem for us when these artists grew and label owners got businesses off the ground using our platform. We’d find ourselves competing head-to-head with major labels or other sources of capital.
In getting to know Tom, as well as Bob [Valentine], Vic [Victor Zaraya] and the rest of the Concord team, they checked all the boxes that were important to us in this new chapter.
The financial backing is critical, but what also became valuable was the global footprint that Concord makes available for our artists. More than anything, there was just so much values alignment between us and them – which is really rare.
Did Stem evaluate other potential partners?
Milana Lewis: In our process, we talked to probably every major music company you can imagine, across about 60 different private equity funds and outside capital sources. But there was always something that didn’t feel right. With Concord, it truly checked all the boxes of what was important to us.
There’s even one small thing that felt like a sign that everything was aligned: Concord’s backed by the Michigan [Retirement Systems] Pension Fund, and that’s my hometown – that’s where I grew up.
Tom, Concord has had success with frontline releases via partnerships like your JV with Pulse Music Group. What role do you see Stem playing in your frontline strategy?
Tom Becci: It’s inherent in what Stem does – providing tools and technology for artists and their teams, whether management teams or labels building around artists. For us, it’s a frontline label with a different economic model. It works differently, but it still attracts new talent and fits very nicely within our portfolio of labels.
“What excites us about Tom and the Concord team is that we now will have the flexibility to make any kind of deal we need to make to retain talent.”
Milana Lewis
Milana Lewis: Just to add to that, Stem has been behind some of the most viral songs every year on TikTok. Every year we say, “this is never going to happen again,” and then it happens again; songs like Justine Skye’s Collide. There are so many breakout successes.
The thing that’s been blocking us is the ability to retain these artists, because when a song goes viral, someone comes along and offers that artist millions of dollars to license or buy that song, and we’ve never been able to compete. What excites us about Tom and the Concord team is that we now will have the flexibility to make any kind of deal we need to make to retain talent.
Tom Becci: And on top of that, if the artist and their team are looking for a different relationship within our family, we have our Pulse joint venture or other options. If they’re looking for a different structure, we can offer that as well, but we’re already in a relationship with them, which is really important. That’s something we’ve been missing.
It sounds like what you’re building is a more flexible ecosystem for artists at different career stages.
Milana Lewis: That’s what I find most interesting about this. A lot of major music companies today are trying to back themselves into the model that we created at Stem, while we’re trying to put ourselves into a position that’s more aligned with what people in the industry expect – but still giving artists optionality at every stage of their career.
With this partnership, an artist can slide through that spectrum and graduate from one type of deal structure to another, but still have consistency in the partnership within one umbrella of people they want to work with.
To that point, the major record companies have been making significant moves in the distribution space – Universal with Caroline/Ingrooves becoming Virgin Music Group, Sony with The Orchard and AWAL. Would you say they’ve been playing catch-up?
Milana Lewis: Let’s look at all the deals happening around us. Universal merged Caroline and Ingrooves into Virgin Music Group, and now Downtown is joining that ecosystem, which also includes Fuga. Sony acquired The Orchard and then AWAL later on.
Stem was the first company to offer an artist-facing dashboard, the first to offer split payments, and the first to offer flexibility in distribution at single-digit rates. You see all these major music companies making acquisitions that get them closer to that model, and starting to invest in similar tooling.
I can promise you that we will not be playing catch-up – we will continue to set the standard and raise the bar even higher.
Tom, what specific capabilities or technologies from Stem were you most interested in for the wider Concord operation?
Tom Becci: In the short term, they will continue to run as a separate and unique business like they always have. Stem will continue to be an independent distributor.
But their technology is very advanced – their dashboard is transparent and clear. It’s easy for an artist and management team who don’t have a back office to manage that, to really engage in the commerce side of the business.
The data analytics tools they’ve developed – we’ll definitely be looking at how we can up our game on the frontline side and use those tools, whether it’s meta-analysis on social platforms or other capabilities.
In the press release, Milana, you mentioned that “this isn’t an exit—it’s an expansion.” That’s an interesting way to frame it. What are your ambitions for Stem’s positioning within Concord?
Milana Lewis: We are now the most well-funded, well-supported independent player in the distribution space. We are highly motivated as a team to realize our vision.
Over the last 10 years, we’ve built the right components of the machine – we just needed better fuel to unleash us. We are so fired up to prove what we’re capable of now that we have the backing of Concord.
Tom, how does this acquisition position Concord to compete with the major music companies?
Tom Becci: It gives us something we didn’t have before, and they all have – all the majors have an independent distribution arm, and we only had record labels. When an artist was looking for an opportunity that we couldn’t offer, we didn’t work with that artist.
Now we have the ability to work with those artists. Whether they come directly to Milana’s team, or we find the artists but they’re looking for that optionality or economic structure – we can now make that offering where before they would have gone to a major because we didn’t have the capability.
Milana Lewis: Similarly, there were labels that came to us that we couldn’t partner with because our underwriting capabilities with previous partners prevented us from making early bets. If a label came to us with zero funding and just wanted to get going, we had the technology and tooling, but couldn’t provide the capital.
One great example is Boom Records – they literally started with two people and now handle significant volume with great clients. We gave them the ability to not only distribute but also automatically pay out all their artists. If they needed to do that elsewhere, they would likely have to hire an entire team.
What we weren’t able to do before was say to them, “Here’s some money to increase your size.”
They’ve had to grow organically. Now, when a label comes to us and shares their vision, we can make an investment, give them more resources and technology, and the ability to take earlier bets, commit more to marketing, and accelerate their growth path. We could probably compress their timeline by half.
Despite bringing a direct distribution platform into the Concord family, you still have a long-standing distribution deal with Universal Music Group for your frontline releases. Are there any plans to change that arrangement?
Tom Becci: UMG has distributed Concord for a very long time.
They’re a great partner and always have been, so there’s no plan to move away from them. Stem will continue to run as a separate and unique business like they always have.
We’re still distributed through Universal Music on our frontline label side, and Stem will continue to be an independent distributor outside of that.
What are the plans for Stem’s existing artist clients? Will their terms or services change?
Milana Lewis: The reason we chose Concord is because we don’t have to change anything about the way we do business. We have complete autonomy. If artists want us to double down, take riskier bets alongside them, we have the flexibility to amend their terms in ways that are still fair and flexible – that will never change about how we do business. It is our absolute guiding star.
Artists can opt into that with us now. We’re not forcing any changes on them moving forward. Even before the Concord deal, we introduced new terms of service with increased flexibility and optionality – just expanding the different structures, deal types, and variety of options for our clients.
The press release mentions that Tone is being spun off and will be a standalone business, with Concord as one of its investors. Can you explain how that will work?
Milana Lewis: Tone was born because other labels came to us and said, “We love all the tools and technology that Stem offers to its distribution clients” – specifically the ability to automate accounting, access dashboards, and streamline everything related to royalty accounting.
They would say, “We can’t use you because we’re stuck in our existing distribution deal with Sony or Fuga, but we still want to offer this artist-first, real-time experience for our labels.”
So we built Tone, taking everything we’ve learned about building Stem and making it its own product. We only launched Tone two years ago, and it’s more of a true software company. For this deal, it was in the best interest for us to separate the two businesses and make Tone fully autonomous.
Is there anything else about the deal or your partnership that you’d like to emphasize?
Tom Becci: From our standpoint, I’m really excited to work directly with Kristin [Graziani, Stem President] and Milana and their team – they’re incredible executives with an incredible team. It’s really exciting for us to learn from them, and hopefully they’ll learn from us.
Milana Lewis: We were really intentional about the boxes we wanted to check when finding a new partner. Concord really did check all those boxes, and the values alignment was critical for us.
Another important aspect: as a company, Stem speaks three languages fluently – we speak music, we speak capital markets, and we speak tech.
Concord does all three incredibly well too. That was really important to us.Music Business Worldwide
