Owning the Sound
Meet the two alumni helping artists take control of their music in the streaming era.
Before the emergence of digital streaming platforms, music artists relied on record labels to promote their work through radio airplay and the distribution of physical products such as albums, cassettes, and CDs. In return, labels typically required artists to give up the rights to the master recordings of their songs, while the artists retained the rights to the lyrics, melodies, composition, and arrangements.
Control over those recordings meant labels dictated when and where music was played—a perennial point of contention between artists and the companies that helped them become successful.
Vydia serves as a counterweight to that dynamic. The music technology platform handles distribution, rights, royalties, and analytics for artists ranging from independent acts to global names like Snoop Dogg and Usher, while giving creators a path to succeed without surrendering ownership and control.
Two Monmouth graduates—Jenna Gaudio ’09 and Mark Gorman ’09—now serve as co-presidents, overseeing the company’s day-to-day operations and helping guide its role in a rapidly evolving industry.
“We came onto the market as a solution for people to choose an alternative to the major labels and retain ownership of their music and content by using the tools that even the playing field,” says Gaudio, who oversees operations. “We provide the infrastructure, technology, and services to power the back end of the music industry.”
Founded in 2013 by New Jersey native Roy LaManna, Vydia has grown into a one-stop shop for artists navigating a fragmented digital landscape. Today, the company supports both digital and physical distribution, manages rights and royalties, and provides tools for merchandising and e-commerce across more than 200 global audio and video platforms.
“We operate like a B2B [business-to-business] company,” says Gorman, who leads the company’s work with artists and labels. “We supply tools for the independent record label sector to distribute their music so they don’t have to rely on the big three of Warner, Sony, or Universal.”
Today’s artists are expected to act as both creators and business operators—managing distribution, analytics, and audience growth alongside making music. While uploading a track is relatively easy, ensuring that every stream or video play generates revenue requires a sophisticated backend. That’s where Vydia’s platform comes in.
We came onto the market as a solution for people to choose an alternative to the major labels and retain ownership of their music and content by using the tools that even the playing field.
Its system tracks how and where content is used, ensuring that monetization flows back to the rights holder—an especially critical function for independent artists without the legal and administrative infrastructure of major labels.
“We do all the distribution,” says Gaudio. “Once the music is published, we collect performance data—are people streaming it, saving it, skipping it? We track all of that, along with the royalties that come from those streams or purchases.”
In a digital ecosystem where songs are endlessly remixed, reposted, and reused, that level of tracking is essential.
“If somebody is about to drop a new album, they might put a block policy on it so that nobody can leak it or upload it,” says Gaudio. “But once it’s live and they want people to share it, it identifies the rights owner and ensures they’re paid every time that content is streamed. We make sure all that’s captured.”
Though Gaudio and Gorman graduated from Monmouth the same year, they didn’t formally connect until they both arrived at Vydia. That shared experience has helped shape a growing relationship between the company and the University.
Since 2021, Vydia has supported global distribution for Monmouth’s student-run record label, Blue Hawk Records, giving students hands-on experience using the same professional-grade tools and infrastructure used to manage releases across platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, and TikTok. The partnership reflects the realities of a digital-first industry, where artists—and the teams behind them—must understand not just how to create music, but how to distribute, track, and monetize it.
It has also created a pipeline, with more than a dozen Monmouth alumni now working at Vydia—a connection that continues to deepen as the company expands. For Gaudio and Gorman, that relationship is a natural extension of Vydia’s broader mission: providing the infrastructure for a new generation of creators while helping shape the talent entering the business.
They see that work as part of a larger shift—one in which Vydia represents a new kind of music company built for the digital era, equipping artists with the tools and real-time insights needed to refine strategy, reach audiences more effectively, and plan releases with greater precision. “Our tools are set up to be able to support the business end of paying out writers and producers, and distributing the content,” Gorman says, “allowing artists to focus on what they do best: creating music.”