Executive Q&A: Shav Garg ‘prettyboyshav’

Emerging technology has created new approaches to the marketing and distribution of music. But it has also created new business models and new methods for artists to fund their work. This week’s speaker, Shav Garg, has built a company, Indify, that has a successful track record of pairing artists with investors so that both might benefit. In this week’s Rezak lecture, we will get a look at this buzzworthy company/platform that is still in beta, learn from Garg about the opportunities he sees for change in the artist development space and generally discuss entrepreneurship and Garg’s own interesting career path.

Shav Garg “prettyboyshav,”CEO and co-founder, Indify

For the past six years, Shav Garg and his childhood best friends Connor Lawrence and Matt Pavia have been building Indify to help emerging artists build their careers. Today, Indify is a marketplace that allows emerging artists with traction to raise funding from strategic investors in a fair and equitable way. Powered by an industry standard data discovery tool that identified Khalid, Billie Eilish and Post Malone early in their careers, the Indify marketplace today allows strategic investors to identify, invest and collect royalties on music investments all via the platform. On the other side artists with traction are able to raise from investors who add strategic value instantaneously and flexibly, often raising funding for a single song and keeping all future ownership of their rights.

The marketplace protects artists by only allowing investments where artists own their recordings, artists keep 50% or more of their recordings and artists keep creative control. Two years ago, Indify raised funding as a company from Alexis Ohanian to build this vision of an equitable future for artists in the music industry. Ohanian has since not only invested in the company, but also invested in the artist Leah Kate on the platform and helped her reach over one million streams per day. Other artists to raise and see success on the platform include SEB for “seaside_demo,” Jx.Zero for “Playboy,” LilyIsThatYou for “FMRN” and Pink Sweat$ for “Honesty.” Since launching, the Indify marketplace has helped independent artists cross one billion plus streams.

Beyond being a co-founder of the company, Garg is an artist himself. Under the name “prettyboyshav” he has reached over 10 million streams on his debut album “too pretty for sunshine” and over seven million across platforms for his single “4runner.” For Garg, being an artist is fundamental to his journey at Indify as it is what inspires his mission to help other artists. It is what allows him to stay grounded to the experiences of emerging artists to empathize and plan a better future in music.