Avicii’s ex-manager Ash Pournouri and Nick Holmstén officially launch superfan startup ‘Belong’

Former Spotify Global Head of Music Nick Holmstén and Ash Pournouri — the entrepreneur who discovered and managed the late Avicii — have officially launched their new company, Belong. The New York-based business, which emerged from stealth this week, aims to verify music fans and route the money they spend back to artists.

Belong’s investors include a16z speedrun, Blitzscaling Ventures, Prevail Capital and Backwards Capital, alongside a group of music and telecom heavyweights: Troy Carter (Lady Gaga’s former manager, Spotify’s ex-Global Head of Creator Services), Hans Vestberg (former Verizon and Ericsson CEO) and Chris Zarou (founder of Backwards Capital and longtime manager of Logic). Vestberg is also joining as board chair.

The concept centres on a simple but overlooked idea: verified identity. Every Belong membership “runs on bank rails,” with each member confirmed as a real person through bank-grade KYC (Know Your Customer) checks rather than a social handle or follower count. That verified identity is then combined with a fan’s engagement data across streaming, social, and past merchandise and ticket purchases to build what the company calls a KYF — Know Your Fan — graph.

Each artist gets a branded digital card, which Belong calls a Passport, held in the fan’s phone wallet and recording how that fan has shown up over time. That record translates into recognition such as face-value presale access, early drops and member-only experiences, with the financial value created when fans spend routed back to the artist.

“Fans have been proving their devotion for decades — the industry just never kept the receipt,” said Holmstén, Belong’s co-founder and CEO. “A sold-out room empties, a number ticks over, and all that love has nowhere to land. We build the rails that carry it.”

Pournouri, who is co-founder and Chief Artist Officer, added: “Fans fund this entire industry, but it barely knows their names. Music sells everything around it, from tickets and merch to culture itself, yet artists capture only a fraction of the value they create. This always bothered me, and we built Belong to fix it.”

Pournouri has remained one of the most-watched figures in Avicii’s post-passing story. Earlier this year, he won an appeal that revived his lawsuit against Bergling family companies, following an earlier ruling that had dismissed his case. Holmstén, meanwhile, ran Spotify’s music team until 2019 and took on artist and label relations after Carter left the streaming service. Belong’s first artist programs will be invitation-only and are set to open in the coming months.