Today we’d like to introduce you to Ben Stauffer.
Hi Ben, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
I started Counterpart Music, first as an artist release strategy company, in February 2020, after seven years running Finance for an independent record label and music publisher in the Nashville area. Before that, I worked as a CPA in my hometown of Pittsburgh, PA, and doing some other smaller music business jobs in Nashville.
In 2021, I began helping some artists managed by a friend by cleaning up their publishing registrations, particularly at the newly-formed Mechanical Licensing Collective. Then in 2022, I took a part-time remote job as Director of Royalty Analysis at a music catalog brokerage company, where we helped songwriters and artists to sell their royalty streams or to receive advances on future royalties.
After picking up a lot of consulting business in both the publishing administration and catalog valuation spaces, I decided to launch Counterpart Music 2.0 in September 2024, as a full publishing administration and catalog valuation business. Right now, I serve about 30 songwriters and publishers as their publishing administrators, collecting and distributing to them royalties from around the world. I am also on the Investment Team of a fund which buys royalty catalogs and do some work helping songwriters and artists on the sell side. I still do some by-the-hour consulting projects, too. You could say that if it involves music royalties, I’m involved in it!
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I decided to launch Counterpart Music as an artist consultancy in February 2020–right before COVID was diagnosed in the U.S. This business was dependent on artists and their teams having money to pay for record release strategy and social media advertising and other marketing…right as tours ground to a halt and therefore so did most of the money! Unfortunate timing, but I learned a lot about what artists were able and willing to pay for, and it also forced me to pivot to helping musicians to GET money they were missing rather than to spend it.
Fortunately, the launch of Counterpart’s Publishing Administration business has gone very smoothly. I have some contacts who knew independent artists and publishers who needed my services and were excited to sign with me right away. I also had a nice streak of luck getting responses to cold emails in the middle of 2025 as I was continuing to grow. After this early growth, word of mouth has helped me continue finding new clients for this business. My work for the investment fund started based on a previous relationship in the catalog sales space and has been steady.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I believe that I’ve been able to sign new clients and to re-sign them because I offer what I call a “white glove” approach to administration. I am a solopreneur, and every client has my cell phone number. I always respond to my clients’ questions quickly. I have also adapted technology to make my work move faster and to stay accurate in claiming as much money as I can for my clients. I built my own royalty portals this summer so that my clients can review their royalties more easily than trying to make sense of a report with hundreds of lines in it. What took me a day to build looks better than what some major companies have built over decades. Ultimately, I think what sets me apart from my competitors, besides being a human my clients can talk directly to, is that while I’m trying to grow, I’m still staying small enough that I can give every client the attention they deserve, and I also keep my promises. I genuinely get excited when I get “a big check” for my clients, too!
Can you talk to us about how you think about risk?
I have become less risk-averse as I’ve grown older. Some of that is making sound financial decisions in the past to allow me to take the risk of starting my own business, while some of that is probably just gaining confidence in what I do and believing that I can grow the business. I definitely took a risk in 2020 starting my artist consulting business, and when that didn’t scale, I pivoted to what I do now which, while riskier than working for someone else, has been a more lucrative side of the music business for me.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://counterpartmusic.com
- Instagram: http://instagram.com/counterpartmusic
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/benstauffer/
- Other: https://link.counterpartmusic.com/Royalty-Check
