We are grateful and proud that nowon AG has been selected among the Top 50 startups in Switzerland. This recognition is an important milestone for our team and a strong signal for the relevance of the problem we are working to solve.
At nowon, we are building technology for the future of music rights management. Our mission is to help collecting societies, music rights organizations and industry partners transform music usage data into structured, reliable and royalty-ready information. This includes live music recognition, setlist digitization, cue sheet processing, metadata linking and new approaches to music attribution in the age of AI-generated content.
Music rights management depends on accurate information. Every live performance, broadcast use, setlist, cue sheet or AI-generated work can create value for creators and rights holders. But today, many of these processes are still manual, fragmented or difficult to scale. Especially in live music, the challenge is not only to know that music was played, but to understand what was played under real-world conditions.
Live performances often differ from studio recordings. Songs are performed in new arrangements, covered by other artists, remixed, shortened, extended or played in noisy environments. This makes accurate identification difficult for traditional recognition systems. nowon is developing technology that can understand musical identity across these variations and support more accurate reporting workflows.
Being selected among the Top 50 startups in Switzerland gave us the opportunity to present this vision to a broader audience of entrepreneurs, investors, industry experts and innovation leaders. It also reflects the strong progress we have made over the past months, from technology development and product validation to collaborations with music rights organizations and public innovation support.
We would like to thank the organizers for the opportunity to present what we are building and for creating a platform that brings together some of Switzerland’s most promising startups. We also want to thank everyone who attended, asked thoughtful questions and engaged in meaningful conversations around the future of music recognition, rights data and fair compensation for creators.
For nowon, this recognition is not only an award moment. It is a motivation to continue building infrastructure that can make music usage reporting more accurate, scalable and transparent.
The music industry is changing rapidly. Live music is becoming more complex, digital reporting expectations are increasing and AI-generated music is introducing new challenges for attribution and rights management. We believe that better technology will play a key role in helping the industry respond to these changes.
Being part of the Top 50 startups in Switzerland strengthens our belief that this is the right time to build that technology.
