A Music Business Worldwide interview profiles Hook, a New York-based social music app founded by Gaurav Sharma in 2022, which lets fans create licensed remixes and video mashups of songs and share them across platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat and SoundCloud. The piece comes as major labels move to embrace fan-made AI content officially, following Spotify and Universal Music Group's May deal allowing Premium subscribers to make licensed AI covers, signalling that licensed remix culture is becoming a mainstream priority for the music industry rather than a copyright grey area.

Sharma says Hook has licensed a catalogue of over 20 million songs, gives artists and rightsholders full creative control, and pays them whenever their music is used or shared. The company reports 45-times growth in active users over the year before its $10 million Series A funding round in February, led by Khosla Ventures, bringing total funding to $16 million with backers including Waverley Capital, Point72 Ventures and Imaginary Ventures. Hook has run remix collaborations with artists including The Weeknd, Lil Wayne, Metro Boomin and Empire of the Sun, and Sharma, a former JioSaavn COO, predicts that within a decade creative participation will become as common as passive listening.