Childhood friends and self-described “outsiders” Dan Lilienthal and José Chayet share their journey from Art History students to disruptors obsessed with the future of musical creation.
Last month, [untitled], which bills itself as “a sacred place for your work-in-progress music,” unveiled a major development. In a post on X, they announced: “Starting today you can sell your projects on [untitled]; make sure to update the app to try it out.”
Paid subscribers—the 32,000 artists, producers, and musicians using the app—now have the ability to offer music directly to their fans. Whether it’s unreleased demos, stems, full songs, or entire projects, artists can sell their work at any price point. An additional 5% of the purchase price is paid to [untitled] by the purchaser.
It’s one of many ways the company, founded by childhood friends Dan Lilienthal and José Chayet, hopes to turn [untitled] into a one-stop platform for career-building. They recently opened a new office in Brooklyn that includes a performance space and a recording studio—a vision that aligns with the founders’ earliest dreams.
“One of the first ideas José and I had was getting a piece of land,” Lilienthal explains. “We wanted to start all of our experiments there: build a studio, do shows, host a festival, and have a team building software.” What began as a pipe dream has evolved into a core pillar of their business.
The duo has also proven adaptable. When the paywall feature was introduced, a small but vocal group on X took issue with licensing language that suggested [untitled] would have perpetual, unlimited access to the music. The team acted quickly, clarifying: “We have updated our terms to clarify that our licensing language is functional for us to be able to provide the service… You control Your Content via the Service settings.”
By remaining artist-first and agile, Lilienthal and Chayet are illustrating why [untitled] remains at the cutting edge of music creation tools.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
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Boardroom: Talk to me about the decision to offer a paywall for artists.
Dan Lilienthal: José and I had a vision from day one to build a vertically integrated music company across creation, distribution, and consumption. That’s an ambitious task. Five and a half years ago, we decided to first focus on building the best place for artists to store, listen to, share, and organize their work-in-progress music.
Before we existed, creators used everything from the Notes app to Dropbox to iMessage—apps not built for music. We decided to just build the best place for that workflow. We spent the first two years figuring out how to build an engineering team, as we aren’t engineers ourselves. After rebuilding the team and the app in New York, we launched publicly on August 2, 2023. Paid projects are our first major step into distribution, letting artists connect directly to their fans.
Was the decision to allow direct selling always part of the plan, or was it a response to the “heat” streaming services like Spotify have been receiving?
José Chayet: We’re not here saying, “Oh my God, there’s no money in music, we are going to save the musicians.” That’s a negative standpoint. If you start there, you’re thinking about marketing, not the product. We are product-obsessed individuals.
We earned our way into launching this feature because there was so much other infrastructure we had to build first. We’re not betting the whole company on the paywall; it’s just another tool in the toolkit. We want the entire creative process to be handled by [untitled] because we genuinely believe no one else puts as much thought and love into the product as we do. We’re the nerdiest people; we are literally obsessed with this.
What were your paths to founding the company?
DL: José and I joke that we’ve known each other since before birth. Our families are both from Mexico City and immigrated to San Diego in the late ’80s. We bonded young because we were both the youngest of three siblings, and all our older brothers were in bands together. This was the early 2000s in San Diego—the mecca for pop-punk. We saw our brothers and wanted to be just like them. We became obsessed with music when we were five or six years old.
Was [untitled] your first big venture into the music space?
JC: We’ve never had “proper” jobs in the music industry. This is Dan’s first full-time job out of college. I worked at Facebook for a couple of years. While we aren’t engineers or musicians, we fit into the tech space.
We both studied art history in college. We saw analogies between the turn of the 20th century in art and what was happening in music. Art was democratized through conceptual art and photography; we believe the same will happen for music. It’s going to be reduced to a series of choices.
We are outsiders on the fringe of both music and tech. No one believed in us at first, so we created this “distorted little world” between the two of us. I told Dan we needed to commit at least six years to this. It’s a war of attrition. You have to want it more than anyone else and be willing to die on every hill until the vision becomes reality. Right now, maybe 1% of that vision has become reality.
Starting today you can sell your projects on [untitled], make sure to update the app to try it out. pic.twitter.com/VEopKvr2rV
— untitledinbrackets (@uuuntitleddd) January 14, 2026
Tell me about the Brooklyn office. Why make New York the home base?
DL: As I mentioned, the original idea was about “land.” We wanted a physical space to try out ideas—studios, festivals, software. We had to earn the credibility to get there. We finally moved into a three-story building in Williamsburg six months ago. We’re the first tenants; no one has ever been in this space before. It allows us to invite the artists who inspire us into our world.
If a fan hears their favorite artist is selling unreleased music on [untitled], how do they get it?
JC: You don’t actually need to download the app; it flows directly from the link the artist shares. It’s an interesting question regarding the “end state” of the app. We intentionally don’t have a “feed” or a discovery algorithm. That makes it an intentional place. Everything in your library is something you chose. Algorithms are hitting a dead end; they don’t feel incredible anymore.
DL: For example, before Geese’s Getting Killed came out, lead singer Cameron Winter leaked the track “Trinidad” on [untitled] and posted it on socials. Fans discovered it there, and 48 hours later, he deactivated the link. It was gone. That’s the kind of experience we want to facilitate.
Down the line, do you want people scrolling [untitled] as a discovery tool?
JC: Curation is hard. I can barely get Dan to listen to the music I like! We build products for ourselves first. As people who love music, it’s refreshing to have a platform where you have to actively seek things out. In a world of passive listening, [untitled] is for active choices.
DL: Nothing feels better than an artist sharing something unreleased with you. It feels amazing.
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