Hook raises $10M to let fans legally remix songs. The payout terms are still private

Hook, a social app for remixing and mashing up licensed songs, announced a $10 million Series A on 18 Feb 2026, led by Khosla Ventures. Existing investors Point72 Ventures, Imaginary Ventures and Waverley Capital joined the round. Hook also lists Kygo's Palm Tree Crew, Three Six Zero, Avex, The Raine Group and KSHMR among its existing backers. Hook puts its total funding at $16 million. The bet is that fan-made derivatives can become a paid, tracked use of music rather than a takedown problem.

What does Hook actually do?

Fans pick a song inside the app, change its genre or mood with AI filters, combine it with another track, add video and post the result to TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat or SoundCloud. Hook says it has access to more than 20 million licensed songs through deals with Downtown Music/FUGA, Too Lost, Primary Wave and Avex. It also says campaigns with Universal Music Group and other labels have drawn more than 250 million views, and that active users grew more than 45 times over the past 12 months.

The new money goes to an Android app, community features, more creation formats and native video and recording, according to the release. Hook is led by founder and CEO Gaurav Sharma; Simmi Singh, previously in strategy and operations for podcasts at Spotify, was promoted to chief operating officer and chief product officer.

How the money got here

Hook's first round was a $3 million seed led by Point72 Ventures and Waverley Capital in October 2023, which Hook said had grown to $3.5 million by March 2024. A further $3 million in March 2025 brought in Khosla, Palm Tree Crew and Raine, and Hook put its total at $6 million then. The Series A takes the stated total to $16 million, as Music Business Worldwide also reports.

Waverley Capital was co-founded by former Warner Music Group CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr., and several backers are artists or artist-management companies. That cap table helps explain why Hook positions itself next to the industry rather than against it. In December 2025 it publicly objected to Suno's "Create Hook" feature, saying the name copied its trademark and contrasting Suno with its own licensed-from-the-start approach.

How do artists get paid, and can they say no?

This is where the announcements go quiet. The Series A release says artists keep ownership and that rightsholders "participate directly in the value created". Khosla's Samir Kaul points to Hook's "licensing, attribution, and reporting infrastructure". The release gives no rate, no split, no payout schedule and no figure for what rightsholders have earned so far.

The earlier deals are the same. The Downtown deal in August 2024 promised that artists and labels would be "fairly compensated" when their music is remixed and posted, and that they would see how and where it is used, with no terms attached. The March 2025 release is the most specific, and the specifics are about fans: creators can earn through a monetization programme based on engagement, referrals and bonuses. For rightsholders it says only that they receive monetization of their content.

On opt-out, none of these releases describes a mechanism an individual artist can use. The Too Lost announcement of February 2025 says the distributor will "allow our clients to deliver their music into Hook's ecosystem". That wording suggests delivery is a choice made through the distributor, but the release doesn't say whether it is opt-in per release, a default in the distribution terms, or something an artist can reverse. Too Lost says it has distributed more than 7 million songs for more than 300,000 artists and labels, so the answer matters to a lot of people.

The gap between "access" and "featured"

The headline catalogue number needs a closer look. In March 2025 Hook said it had 16 music partners and featured more than 1,200 artists. Eleven months later it describes access to more than 20 million licensed songs. Both can be true: a deal with a distributor gives access to a catalogue, while a featured artist has stems, filters or campaigns built around their songs. But for anyone judging the business, "20 million songs" describes deals with distributors, not how many artists are actually earning from the app.

What we think

Licensed remixing is a better answer than either of the obvious alternatives. Fans already edit songs on social platforms at scale: Hook's Downtown release cites a Pex estimate that nearly 40% of music used on TikTok is modified in some way. Generative models that make soundalikes compete with the artists they learned from. Hook's model keeps the original recording at the centre and, on paper, pays its owner. Sharma made the same case in a January 2026 column published by Hook, arguing that opt-in licensing is "the floor, not the ceiling" and that platforms owe artists stem-level attribution, creative controls and transparency reporting.

That column is the standard we would hold Hook to, and by it the Series A release falls short. A company that sells "reporting infrastructure" to investors could publish basic numbers: the share of revenue that goes to rightsholders, how payments are triggered (per creation, per share, per view) and how often they are paid. The one programme Hook has described in any detail pays fans for engagement. That isn't a problem in itself, but a business that sets out its creator incentives and keeps its rightsholder terms private has chosen what to make visible.

The second-order effect worth watching is who holds the switch. Hook's licences run through distributors, labels and publishers, so an independent artist's say over remixes of their song probably sits in a distribution agreement they signed for other reasons. The winners in that set-up are the catalogue holders who negotiate the terms. Artists on those catalogues only gain if the payout is visible on their statements and they can turn it off.

Some fans who start by remixing will want to make their own tracks, and tools such as Veena, a browser DAW with an AI co-producer, are built for that step. For artists today the practical step is simple: ask your distributor whether your catalogue has been delivered to Hook, on what terms, and how you would see the money on your statement. If they can't tell you, that's your answer for now.