Cleared and That Pitch Team Up In the Fight Against Fraud

At the Music Fights Fraud Alliance we are incredibly thrilled to announce Cleared and That Pitch as our newest partners in the industry’s fight against fraud. The brainchildren of industry problem-solver, Mark Eckert, both Cleared and That Pitch provide simple tools that empower artists, clarify rights management, and make the music supply chain measurably more efficient. Combined, their input and insight will prove invaluable to the Alliance in support of our mission to fight against fraud. 

To learn more about these companies, and discuss possible solutions and technologies to bolster the industry’s common defenses against suspicious activity, MFFA’s Executive Director Michael Lewan recently sat down with Mark.

You’re not a typical music or tech exec. I believe you when you say that you are not in this to make money, but to solve problems. How did you end up running music solution companies? What brought you to music?

I started as a producer and drummer. I’ve worked on a bunch of records for Future, Lil Baby, Juice WRLD, DaBaby, Dreamville - and also… plenty of records that went nowhere.Naturally when you start working on more records that have more notoriety, sync reps start reaching out - and that’s how I stumbled into sync.

It didn’t take long to learn that the sync industry as a whole, is wildly inefficient, opaque, and overflowing with middlemen. Payments aren’t transparent. Clearance runs on trust. New artists usually get in by signing with someone who already has relationships - and that access is expensive (20%-90% of net earnings. Yes you read that right.)

As an example, which really started this whole thing for me, was my first major placement through an agent who was working on something for Marriott. The deal was worth over $25k. I was paid a little shy of $3k, more than a year later. After paying my team, most of the money had disappeared into fees. When I asked around, I realized this wasn’t unusual. It was normal. Just rarely discussed. I was appalled.

At the same time, I was talking with sync library execs. They had a different problem. They needed large volumes of cleared, usable music, but there was no real infrastructure to support that. Streaming has distributors, fingerprinting, and standardized pipelines. Sync libraries don’t. Every library works differently, and sourcing music was slow and messy.

My good friends Travis Terrell (Co-Founder & President) and Trevor Hinesley (Co-Founder & CTO) of Soundstripe asked if I could help source music from my audience. I sent an email to my list of about 30,000 artists. Thousands of tracks came in on day one.

Soundstripe became our first library partner. Within months, we were distributing thousands of songs to them, paying artists transparently, and helping many move into full-time sync work. With advisement over the years from friends of mine Joel T Jordan (Founder of Synchtank) and Jason Jordan (Previously Symphonic, OneRPM, SVP A&R Republic/UMG, etc.), I kept building.

The goal was pretty simple, make sync as easy as distribution - and get artists paid 100%.

Walk me through Cleared and That Pitch. What do both companies do, and what problems are they solving within the industry?

That Pitch and Cleared solve two of the biggest hidden problems in sync: artists' ability to sell their music from sync libraries (stores where music is sold to filmmakers) and deterring sync specific legal risk.

That Pitch distributes music into 100+ of the world’s top sync libraries.

It removes the legally confusing, relationship-based, inefficient middle layer that keeps most artists out of sync. Artists upload their music and automatically get distributed into the world’s top sync libraries. These libraries combined, sell to millions of customers around the world, and artists get paid 100% of their earnings. Libraries get properly packaged, ready-to-use music at scale according to their unique sync-specific requirements - without chaos, email chains, or guesswork. 

Cleared exists because one bad sample can end everything.

It’s an algorithm we built to automatically detect uncleared samples that could trigger label lawsuits or Content ID strikes - both of which are career-ending in sync. If a library places even one uncleared track, that artist is often blacklisted around the entire sync world.

Together, That Pitch and Cleared make sync scalable, transparent, and safe.

Fraud takes many forms in music, and a lot of it can be chalked up to bad data, artists taking shortcuts, and just generally not understanding some of the “right ways” to get music out there. And understandably so, it can be a pretty convoluted system. How do you navigate dealing with creatives and allowing them to do what they do best…create?

I learned this by being a producer - growing up in studios as a session drummer first, then working my way from producing small records to bigger ones. One of the best pieces of advice I got from one of my mentors was “you have to meet the artist where they’re at.” That’s the job. And once you do, it’s entirely your responsibility to fill in the gaps. That’s what great engineers, producers, and backing musicians have always done.

It’s no different in software. 

If you genuinely respect where someone is in their journey, you can help them get to their next step. Anyone who’s been in a control room during a vocal take knows when to push the artist, and when to stop. Push too much for ‘that take’, and you ruin the session. Someone singing for the first time isn’t going to sound like Lalah Hathaway no matter how hard you push. That takes years (and in the case of Lalah - a lot of magic haha). The goal is to make the most rewarding experience and record possible right now, with what’s in front of you.

I’m obsessed with artists and genuinely respect their journey. I talk to 5–15 artists on That Pitch every week, and the first question I always ask is: What do you hate about sync, publishing, the industry, That Pitch? From there, it’s on me to fill the gaps quietly, without adding work for them.

Most companies want users logged in constantly. I want the opposite. I want artists logged in as little as possible. I want artists to make music - not becoming metadata experts  Sync should have no learning curve. For almost everything, it should already be handled.

Once upon a time, we were having the same convos about expecting artists & labels to understand complex (now behind the scenes) technical requirements distributing to iTunes, Napster, eMusic etc.

It takes time.

To be honest, I think part of why this works is because I’ve never taken outside investment - and I won’t. It’s given me the freedom to refine things for years without pressure, as long as the business paid for itself. No artificial timelines. Just fixing real problems properly.

In fact, building Cleared was a perfect example of that. 

The overwhelming majority of fraud we’ve had to deal with wasn’t malicious - it’s simply artists not fully understanding all of the rules in the wide world of sync and international publishing compliance… and how that ultimately related to Samples and Content ID. 

So instead of asking artists to learn all of that, I had to build the infrastructure that caught issues for them. It was really hard and absolutely drained my bank account - but it needed to exist.

You can raise all the VC or PE you want, get all of the connections possible - but that alone doesn't solve these problems. What does is deep thought, constant conversations with artists, going to their shows, sharing the stage, and remembering your product isn’t the center of their world - it’s just a part of it, and frankly - a small part of it. I play jazz clubs every week, go to shows multiple times a week - and am committed to staying on the ground floor seeing how I can just simply make things a little bit easier for my community.

Now practically, all of this boils down to UX refinement and millions of automations running quietly in the background - things I’ve been improving since 2017. Making something feel simple, whether it’s a product or a record, requires a lot of complexity behind the scenes. That’s my responsibility and our team’s responsibility - not the artist’s.

Ultimately my dream growing up wasn’t to get music into a commercial. It was to play shows, be in the studio, and go on tour. Most artists feel the same way. The goal is to build systems that let them benefit from sync without forcing them to change who they are - or making ‘my product’ the center of their life.

UGC content is a huge driver for artists of all stripes and sizes, but it's also pretty prone to fraudulent activity– whether traditional copyright violations, or more sophisticated like ad-farming and audio manipulation– authentic creators are both being taken advantage of by others or by the system. Cleared certainly helps a lot on the front-end, so what are some concerns you’re seeing or hearing?

At this point, it’s much less to do with what our artists upload and more to do with mitigating risk down the chain of value.

If something does get through Cleared, even when a sample existed early on, it’s typically been manipulated so heavily that it no longer resembles the original audio. Sync libraries have zero tolerance for uncleared music - whether it’s samples, Content ID, PRO’s or rightsholder issues (and many more potential nooks and cranny things you can’t believe goes into all of this) so there’s no margin for error. Thankfully, we’ve had zero copyright infringement or Content ID takedowns across our entire network.

Now, I think this goes without saying - but Sync is fundamentally different from streaming. There’s no botting or ad farms, but it is a B2B2B model. Artists distribute to libraries, who then license to other businesses. It may stop with the filmmaker on the platform. But it may actually be a white-label licensing offer for a client of theirs, who licenses to filmmakers in their network.

Because of that, a major focus for us is transparency over indirect licensing - how libraries work with third parties - and making sure those structures stay aligned, including transparent payments both upfront and through international PROs. 

Libraries change business models. That’s normal. Customer bases and end usage change often. That’s also normal. This is fundamentally different than in the streaming world where the model and customer stays the same.

Our responsibility is to make sure those changes still respect existing licensing terms, maximize artist payouts, and support the library’s pivot or new vertical at the same time. Ultimately, while we do this already - the concern is systemizing approvals in a way that respects rightsholders, evolving library models, and end customers - without causing unneeded friction anywhere in the chain.

With MFFA you are joining the industry’s commitment to root out and deter suspicious activity. Why did you decide to partner? And what are you hoping to accomplish?

The MFFA is simply the industry standard organization for fraud prevention in our industry. Everyone is here because they are in it for the right reasons, everyone is unbelievably friendly. The openness to share processes, and a thought that I believe we can help on the sync side, is what motivated me to join. I am very much a ‘collab over compete’ kinda guy and owe much of my career (and friendships) to that mentality. There are simply things I know that others don’t, and things that they know that I don’t. I genuinely believe the industry working together makes it a better industry for everyone.

[For us], staying close to people who think deeply about risk and deterrence is critical. Those systems protect the integrity of our library partners and our artists, and make sure participation stays fair, transparent, and hard to abuse.

As a visionary and creator, what do you see as a concern on the horizon in 2026 that should give everyone a pause? What do you think we should be building towards to solve now rather than in the future?

Visionary! What a compliment. I’m no executive chef, I’m still stoked to be doing the dishes every day. 

I’m not an expert in the DSP world since That Pitch and Cleared are purpose-built for sync. But in my world, one major issue in 2026 is that economically viable, real-time reporting for sync placements media-wide still doesn’t exist.

Libraries sell licenses, but they often don’t have exact air times, links, or even confirmation of when and where something will run because the license could be bought before the production is completed or their air time isn’t confirmed. That lack of infrastructure and communication creates a transparency gap - not because anyone’s hiding anything, but because the systems simply aren’t there.

We’ve had lots of artists hear their music during NBA games, in national commercials, or inside apps when a new feature launches. That surprise is cool and we’ll get it in a report - but it’d be far better if they knew beforehand industry-wide. Imagine getting a notification that says, “Your song will play for 14 seconds during a Celtics vs Heat game on the 5th.” And it’s put in their calendar for them. That’s something artists can share with fans, friends, and family in real time so sync becomes less of a magical thing, and just… something that normally occurs in music.

One of the fastest ways to build trust is transparency. And in sync, transparency is often missing not by choice - but because the infrastructure hasn’t been built yet. That’s what we should be solving now, instead of accepting it as normal.

Anything else up your sleeve that people should be on the lookout for?

We’re teaming up with a handful of distributors this year who want more sync options for their artists, which is exciting - especially since our library partners are constantly asking for more music from more artists.

We’ve also recently come to a few agreements which have opened the door to a few large library deals that would meaningfully change both access and economics for independent artists in sync. I have to stay vague - NDAs and all - but you’ll definitely see some writeups about it this year!