With growing transaction volume and an expanding roster of artists, beatBread needed a faster, more reliable way to handle payments, tax compliance, and recipient verification. By partnering with Trolley, they enhanced their existing workflows with automation, creating more space to focus on the artist experience.
“We’ve always focused on building systems that support artists and scale with us,” said Carolyn McMahon, Head of Operations at beatBread. “Trolley gave us the automation we needed to keep delivering on that mission as we grow.”
For a company built on speed and artist empowerment, the switch wasn’t just about saving time, it was about scaling smarter while keeping artists front and center.
Laying the groundwork for scalable, artist-first operations
beatBread is on a mission to give independent artists the financial freedom to grow on their own terms. Through its innovative funding platform, beatBread offers artists advances on future streaming royalties, without giving up ownership or creative control. Artists choose their own path, and beatBread provides the data and tools to help them navigate it.
As the company scaled, so did the complexity of its backend operations.
Coordinating approvals, ensuring accurate recipient details, and managing tax compliance all required careful coordination from the Finance and Operations teams.
As beatBread grew, the team began looking for a more efficient, centralized approach that would keep the artist experience seamless without adding overhead.
Why they chose Trolley: Taxes, APIs, and a great team
When the team began looking for a platform that could simplify and automate their artist payments, one priority was clear: taxes.
“Bringing all payments into one place was a huge win for tax season, and the number one reason we decided to move forward with Trolley,” said Tony Nelson, beatBread’s Director of External Products.
The beatBread team wanted a solution that would allow them to handle payouts and tax workflows together, rather than managing them as separate, disconnected processes.
They were also drawn to Trolley’s developer-friendly APIs, reporting dashboards, and low lift onboarding. “The dashboards looked great, and so did the APIs. Our back-end team immediately liked it,” said Tony.
What sealed the deal, though, was the human side. “Rita and Tom [from Trolley’s customer success and sales teams, respectively] were friendly, attentive and took the time to understand our unique business case,” Carolyn said. “It made the decision to move forward with Trolley an easy one.”
A smoother experience for artists and teams
Since implementing Trolley’s Pay, Tax, and Trust suite, beatBread has been able to simplify artist payouts and tax preparation. The impact has been noticeable across teams.
Trolley’s identity verification tools have also become a key part of their process.
For beatBread, verifying artist identity is crucial to combatting fraud. Trolley’s Trust product provides a unified risk-management workflow, collecting and verifying government-issued IDs with live photo validation, screening against global watchlists, and tracking login activity and account changes to flag suspicious behavior.
beatBread now proactively prevents fraudulent payouts, protects artist royalties, and builds trust at every step of the payment process. The integration has already delivered strong results. “It’s been great,” Carolyn added. “Trust was one of our most successful integrations last year.”
Setting the stage for sustainable, secure growth
With Trolley, beatBread has added automation and oversight to their artist payments process without disrupting their commitment to flexibility and artist control. Payouts are faster. Tax season is smoother. And recipient verification is now part of a seamless flow that supports their internal teams and the artists they serve.
The result is a payout stack that grows with beatBread as they grow, a partnership built on trust and a shared commitment to empowering independent artists.
Ready to give your team the same speed boost and confidence in your processes? Automate artist payouts in minutes with Trolley.
About Trolley
Trolley helps businesses pay people, not just invoices. As the payouts platform of choice for companies working with creators, musicians, freelancers, and contractors, Trolley enables payouts at scale with built-in tax compliance and ID verification. Offering global reach and deep industry expertise, Trolley supports leaders like beatBread, OpenPlay, SoundCloud, Bandcamp, and Downtown Music in powering fair, fast, and compliant payouts. Annually, Trolley processes billions of dollars in payouts to over 210 countries and territories, supporting 5+ million payees around the world. See how Trolley can deliver fast, compliant, and scalable payment workflows for your business.
