Stephan came up through the electronic music business in the mid-2000s, when the European club scene was still figuring out how rights and recordings actually moved between Berlin, Amsterdam, and London. He started in artist management, then spent years inside independent labels handling release schedules, sync placements, and the slow grind of neighbouring rights collection across half a dozen societies. Publishing came later. Once he saw how much value was sitting in unregistered splits and uncollected royalties, he made it the focus of most of his next decade.

His thesis is simple, even if the work isn't: a track has multiple revenue streams, and most artists and small labels capture maybe half of them. Master royalties get attention because they show up in distributor statements. Publishing, neighbouring rights, sync income, and catalog value tend to sit further from view, especially across borders. Stephan spends his time on that gap. What he actually looks at: where money is being left on the table. What a catalog is worth once it's cleaned up. Which deals are worth doing versus walking away from. Operator's instinct, not consultant's deck.

At Qlero, Stephan advises on the commercial side. How the platform handles rights deals in practice. What a label or publisher actually needs to see in a royalty statement. Whether the structural pieces are there to make catalog migrations bearable rather than punishing. He pushes back on assumptions when the product team is a step or two removed from how operators really work. The reason he came in: most of the music rights software he's used over the last fifteen years has been built by people who never had to chase a missing songwriter share at midnight before a payout cycle. Qlero felt closer to the actual job.