How MuseHub and Kinde empower millions of music creators
Kinde recently spoke with David William Hearn, VP of platform at MuseHub, about how Kinde came to be the authentication front of such a visionary product.
MuseHub is a music and audio launchpad backed by Muse Group, which encompasses brands such as Ultimate Guitar, MuseScore, Audacity, Hal Leonard, and more. Their key offering is to give developers, producers, and smaller indie creators a way to distribute and monetize their passion projects.
Their front end looks like a typical app for sound plugins, audio loops, and other creative tools, but the true magic happens underneath. MuseHub’s platform wraps developers’ C++ or JUCE-based code, handles specialized DRM and licensing, manages payments and taxes, and then publishes products to more than two million music creators worldwide. David describes it as “a storefront that customers can buy from, with a full publishing platform behind it”.
MuseHub doesn’t just enable creative teams to list and sell audio products; it removes the heavy lifting of distribution, compliance, refunds, and marketing. David explains:
“We want to give smaller startups and indie developers a springboard in under ten minutes—everything from licenses to handling taxes to distribution. No more fragmented or complicated distribution, especially for folks who are really just coders at heart.”
With desktop and web apps, specialized DRM technology, and a global user base that includes both end music creators and partner developers, MuseHub’s team knew they had to get user management absolutely right from the start.
This level of vision requires an equally versatile approach to authentication. This is how we helped MuseHub scale to 290K MAU in 90 days
Like a lot of businesses, MuseHub originally tried to build an internal solution. But authentication is hard, and the team soon realized that it was cumbersome, slow, and risky—especially given their aggressive launch timeline and the scale of users they expected to onboard.
That’s when they started to evaluate identity providers, looking for the right fit for value, reliability, scalability, and simplicity. MuseHub noticed many providers wanted them to agree to enterprise contracts early (with correspondingly high price tags and complicated terms), but with none of the right-sized plans or scalable features that MuseHub wanted. Authentication is an “interesting space”, according to David, and labelled some providers as “a little bit start-up hostile”.
“They might have a free tier, but once you start getting larger volumes—especially for a brand-new product—it gets really complicated really quickly. If you’re not at multi-million-dollar sales yet, you often end up locked into an enormous enterprise contract.”
Then MuseHub discovered Kinde’s developer-friendly documentation, straightforward pricing, and robust features—in particular passwordless log in, multi-factor authentication, and out-of-the-box organization management. Kinde could also support MuseHub’s multiple platforms (native macOS, native Windows, and web), while also meeting brand and security requirements.
They were looking for “a partner that had all the tech infrastructure but more of a builder mindset,” David said. Then they found Kinde.
MuseHub doesn’t just authenticate users who purchase music tools—it securely onboards partner developers who upload their products, connect bank details for payouts, and manage sensitive IP. This requires advanced flows in the background: different user roles, toggles for 2FA, and an organization-based approach where a developer can invite additional team members onto their partner account.
“We have some complex requirements,” David explains. “We have Mac and Windows native apps, plus a web front end, and then a shared core that handles licensing and authentication.” Added to that there were also “sophisticated flows—things like PKCE and custom domain handling—so it would all feel like one brand from the user’s perspective. Kinde’s simplicity was key.”
Handling complexity is in Kinde’s wheelhouse, but we also stood apart in who we are, and the quality of support we offer. “One of the first things we loved about Kinde was that we weren’t on our own,” David recalls.
“Other solutions were basically like, ‘Here are the docs. You figure it out.’ With Kinde, we could jump into calls and talk directly to the devs. They’d even join our Slack channels. It felt like we had an actual partner who understood our product and timeline.”
With this level of partnership, onboarding was not only a better experience, but a speedy one too. MuseHub estimates it took only three to four weeks to integrate Kinde across the entire stack, including the native desktop apps and back-end logic.
“We had one principal developer who was juggling other tasks too. Kinde was so straightforward that we basically ended up done in a few weeks, not months. Considering how many platforms we were juggling, that was outstanding.”
Security is more than just a compliance check for MuseHub—it is crucial to protecting their creators’ intellectual property and ensuring smooth royalty payouts. MuseHub built a specialized DRM wrapper that needed to trust the identity tokens coming from Kinde.
“That’s how we can write a plugin, drop it on our dev tool, and license it instantly. The next step is making sure we only grant access to valid customers or testers. So we rely on the tokens from Kinde to do all that gating,” says David.
MuseHub also manages financial data, from microtransactions to subscription discounts, plus more typical e-commerce flows. MuseHub needed a robust “front door” to ensure only authorized logins could reach these services. Kinde’s organization-level features and custom roles gave the MuseHub team the flexibility to do exactly that, even layering on extra security for partner/developer accounts. David notes, “we rely on Kinde’s organization approach, then do role-based logic in our own system, and it’s all seamless.”
MuseHub launched without any worries. The authentication “just worked,” leaving the MuseHub team free to focus on perfecting their storefront, supporting developers, and building new features.
“Honestly, you don’t want to think about authentication,” David laughs. “We have enough on our plate building everything else. We needed something that could handle hundreds of thousands of users and even spike to higher if needed. With Kinde, we never worried. It just works.”
290K in MAU on Kinde in the first three months
Kinde’s personalized, problem-solving approach resonated with MuseHub, who are also a company that sees itself as more than just another software platform. “Kinde fit into our vision,” according to David. “With some other providers, you feel like you’re just a number. With Kinde, the devs were basically on speed-dial when we were going through integration.”
That collaborative ethos set the foundation for an ongoing relationship. Even after launch, MuseHub’s team continues to explore new Kinde capabilities such as custom branding in the sign-in flow, feature flags, and token enrichment for advanced roles—all tools that can help them refine their user experience.
For MuseHub, implementing Kinde took an urgent problem—solving complex user authentication before a fast-approaching deadline—and turned it into a competitive advantage. “If you’re considering Kinde, I’d say just try it,” David concludes. “The biggest win for us is that it’s a rock-solid identity solution that doesn’t treat you like a giant enterprise. And if you want to scale up? No problem. It really is that simple.”
MuseHub’s experience underscores the power of choosing the right partner at the right time. By focusing on security, UX simplicity, and developer-friendliness, Kinde enabled MuseHub to keep its core promise: helping indie music-tool creators bring their passion to millions of users—with zero friction along the way.
Ready to build your own seamless, secure authentication?
Explore Kinde’s developer-friendly solution at kinde.com. You’ll find powerful APIs, enterprise-grade security, and a team committed to helping you launch faster, just like MuseHub.