Ghazi, the founder of independent label and distribution company Empire, has launched Supply Chain, a business-to-business cloud platform intended to serve the operational side of the global independent music market. The new company says it combines technology, distribution, operations and commercial connectivity, with an emphasis on letting clients retain control of their catalogs, data, customer relationships and business decisions.
Supply Chain is now operating globally after a beta period that began in 2025. Its international headquarters are in Amsterdam. The company has also named Craig May as senior vice president of marketing and Kristy May as senior vice president of business affairs.
For a sector in which ownership, reporting and payment workflows can be as consequential as the songs themselves, the pitch is broad: a neutral platform that can help independent music businesses handle complex rights and revenue processes without asking them to hand over the core assets those businesses are built around.
What Supply Chain says it is building
The stated objective is not merely to move releases through a distribution pipeline. Supply Chain is positioning itself as infrastructure for independent music operations, spanning the tools and commercial connections businesses may need to operate internationally.
In practical terms, that ambition includes rights management and several different revenue categories. Ghazi said the platform can manage contracts, master royalties, publishing royalties, merchandise royalties and split payments, among other functions.
Those terms describe distinct parts of the music business:
- Master royalties relate to the sound recording itself. A label, artist or another rights holder may own or control that recording.
- Publishing royalties concern the underlying musical composition, such as the song’s music and lyrics, which can involve writers and publishing interests separately from the recording owner.
- Split payments are payments divided among multiple entitled parties, an arrangement that can become more involved when a project has several collaborators or rights holders.
- Merchandise royalties concern revenue obligations tied to merchandise arrangements.
Managing those categories in one environment is an operational proposition rather than a creative one, but it could matter greatly to labels, artists and rights-focused companies. Contracts establish who is owed what; royalty accounting is the process of applying those agreements to revenue; and payment execution is where that information has to result in the correct parties receiving funds. Supply Chain’s value proposition depends on its ability to bring those jobs together while reducing what Ghazi calls “tech friction.”
Neutral infrastructure and retained control
The company’s language around neutrality is central to the launch. Supply Chain says independent businesses can use enterprise-grade infrastructure without surrendering their catalog control, data, client relationships or commercial choices.
Related coverage includes Ghazi Launches Supply Chain for Independent Music Infrastructure.
That distinction is especially important in a business-to-business setting. “B2B” means the product is designed for organizations serving other organizations, rather than a consumer-facing music app built for listeners. The prospective users described here include independent labels and other companies across the wider industry ecosystem.
A catalog is generally the body of music rights a company or artist controls. Data can include the information required to administer releases, contracts, payments and commercial activity. Client relationships are equally sensitive: for a service provider, retaining direct ties with its customers can be a defining part of its business. Supply Chain’s promise is therefore less about replacing an independent company’s identity than supplying shared technology and operational capability underneath it.
That is also why the company is describing itself as infrastructure. In this context, infrastructure means the systems that support day-to-day music-business work: handling information, administering rights, connecting commercial processes and distributing funds or reporting across a client’s operations. It is the work behind the release calendar rather than the music itself.
A global claim with local differences in mind
Ghazi framed the project as a response to the fact that independent music companies do not all operate under the same circumstances. He pointed to the differing needs of an independent label in Brazil, an artist in India and a private-equity company that has invested $500 million in catalogs.
The specific point is not that every user needs the same feature set. It is that a rights-management system intended for global use must be able to account for different commercial models and business needs. Supply Chain calls this a culturally nuanced approach to rights management.
That phrase should not be read as a claim that the company has solved every local complexity; the launch information does not detail country-by-country functionality. But it does clarify the strategic target. Supply Chain wants to provide a scalable system that can serve organizations with different sizes, structures and priorities, rather than treating the independent market as one uniform customer type.
Ghazi said the platform has been in development for five years and was built to be scalable and “future-proof.” Scalability, in software terms, refers to a system’s ability to handle growing activity or a larger client base without needing to be rebuilt from the ground up. “Future-proof” is necessarily an aspiration, not a measurable guarantee, but it signals that Supply Chain is trying to build for changes in the music business rather than a single, fixed workflow.
The Ampsuite partnership
Supply Chain has also announced a launch partnership with Ampsuite, which is owned by Beatport. The partnership is intended to power infrastructure expansion.
Ampsuite provides tools for the labels that power Beatport, according to Beatport chief executive Matt Gralen. Gralen said the company was looking to offer more as the business evolves, describing Supply Chain as a partner with advanced features available immediately and an ambition to develop further for the industry.
The announcement does not spell out every product-level consequence for Ampsuite users, so it would be premature to characterize the arrangement as a specific new feature rollout. What is clear is that the partnership gives Supply Chain an early connection to an existing label-tools business, while giving Ampsuite access to the new company’s technology and rights-management ambitions.
Why the operational layer matters
Music discussions often focus on artists, releases, streaming destinations and audience attention. Yet a global independent business also has to maintain agreements, track rights, calculate multiple royalty types and coordinate payments. Those jobs can affect whether businesses have timely information and whether collaborators can understand the terms attached to their work.
Supply Chain’s thesis is that better systems at that layer can free independent businesses to spend less energy navigating fragmented technology. Ghazi’s own argument is that operational efficiency can leave more room for creativity. That is a reasonable business objective, although the launch itself does not provide performance figures, client totals or direct evidence quantifying how much time or cost the platform saves.
For potential users, the meaningful questions will be concrete ones: whether the platform fits their existing contract and royalty workflows, whether it accommodates the commercial structures they already use, and whether its promise of retained control holds up across day-to-day operations. The information released so far establishes the intended scope, but not a detailed public checklist of capabilities or integrations.
Still, Supply Chain enters the market with a clear framing. It is seeking to be a global operating layer for independent music companies that want sophisticated technical and commercial tools without giving up the relationships and rights that make them independent in the first place.
The launch also lands amid broader attention on how music companies organize their business operations. For another recent example of industry-side restructuring, see Warner Music Group’s move to unify its global sync teams. Supply Chain is approaching a different area, but both developments underline how organizational design and connected systems remain major priorities behind the music that reaches listeners.
