32MusicWeek 20.09.13 REPORT ROYALTY COLLECTION


“The industry should work with ISPs to tap big potential revenues in advertising money, mobile and collecting money that is not flowing” WILLARD AHDRITZ, KOBALT MUSIC GROUP


agrees that technology is central to effective royalty administration in 2013, emphasising that “continued focus on a robust and flexible technology platform is critical.” “BMI is constantly evolving our technological


infrastructure and core business operations to maximise efficiency,” he says. “Working with industry-leading key partners, we


are developing new business tools for our affiliates and licensees to do online business better and faster and build new tools to address their real needs.” He adds: “We recently launched BMI Mobile


for iPhone, iPad and Android users, which affords quick access to self-service options,” Conlon offers as an example. “Then there’s BMI Live, a revolutionary program which pays performing songwriters for live performances in small venues.”


‘STOP CREATING TECH BARRIERS’ Kobalt founder Willard Ahdritz is keen to see what he feels are his company’s core values stretched further across the industry: a greater synergy with technology and more transparency between licensed outlets for music, royalty collectors and rights-holders. “We need to partner with tech, not create


barriers, and open the flow of information,” he says. “We need a greater understanding between the tech and music sectors, and tech companies need more experts managing publishing licensing on a global scale. “Yesterday was all about ‘Show me the money’,


today it’s ‘Show me where the money is’. We challenge our fellow publishers, labels and tech companies to join our mission to move the industry toward total transparency.” Ahdritz is keen to bolster royalty administration’s


relationship with technology companies in a very direct sense to create more efficient relationships


RIGHT Rock royalty: Kobalt administers more than 300,000 copyrights worldwide on behalf of over 1,500 clients including Sir Paul McCartney


between each link in the chain. “The industry should work with ISPs to tap big


potential revenues in advertising money, mobile and collecting unlicensed or uncollected money that is not flowing,” he suggests. “At Kobalt, we believe in collective licensing and


building bridges between these industries that deliver more transparency and offer different cost structures and ways of doing business. To date, this is the formula that has worked.”


“A continued focus on a robust and flexible technology platform will be critical for effective royalty collection in 2013 and in the future” RICHARD CONLON, BMI


PPL’s Leathem - whose company counts


6.2 million recordings and 65,000 performers on its books - also points to the need for more global relationships: “It’s happening all over the world: more and more recordings are being used by more and more services, so we’ve been looking at how we collaborate to handle increasing volumes of data, because ultimately that’s going to enable us to get more money paid more accurately and quickly.” But PPL is keen to also work on the ground


with labels and performers to make sure that collection agencies and administrators are being given the information they need in the first place. “We’ve had to push the record companies very


hard indeed about the quality of the information they provide us with,” he says. “We sat down with them a few years ago and established a higher standard that would be mandatory if they were going to register recordings with us. We need to know things like the ISRC, main artist, title, country of recording… There’s a whole load of things that they have to provide and if they don’t provide that then we can’t pay the record company for that recording. “We also work with performers and managers


to make sure they’re linked to all the recordings they’ve played on. It really is a collaborative effort to get everyone to realise the importance of the role they play.”


CRUNCHING THE NUMBERS: THE THIRD PARTIES BEHIND THE INDUSTRY’S ROYALTY ADMINISTRATION SOFTWARE


Although there are some companies with royalty collection and administration services that have developed their own software solutions to optimise their clients’ experience, labels and publishers can turn to third party software providers to bring the process in- house. We speak to two providers of such software to understand exactly what their packages are capable of and why they’re of benefit in an increasingly complicated area of music business.


Phil Bird, Global Sales Manager, Counterpoint “With over 400 clients worldwide we are the pre-eminent supplier of royalty administration software to both the record label and music publishing sectors. Our clients include: BMG Rights Management, Imagem BV, PIAS, Carlin Music Corp., Bucks Music, Mute Artists, Blue Mountain Music, Demon Music Group, Eagle Rock. Furthermore, we are major suppliers of royalty administration and rights management solutions to the large TV and Film companies: Fox Networks, NBC


Universal, BBC Worldwide, MTV, Discovery and many more. “Because our software has become the favoured option in both the music publishing


and record label sectors this has huge benefits for an increasingly inter-connected music industry (co-publishers, sub-publishers and licenses). Since having a common royalty


system greatly enhances data flows between companies meaning quicker and more accurate data transfer.


Guenter Loibl, CEO, Rebeat “Rebeat Business Edition solves the distribution and accounting problem for labels. We've taken an integrated approach to this issue, and the workflow is vastly simplified as a result. The Rebeat software already knows your products, so you just add contractual data to each product and start accounting (clients can typically start in less than three clicks). After starting the accounting process, you can even send out statements to your artists via email automatically.


“Our goal is to reduce the hassle associated with digital accounting, and save labels a lot


of money while reducing errors. The result? Rebeat helps labels free resources for more important jobs like A&R, marketing and promotion. “The amount of accounting data has exploded over the last few years. Today, reports


by streaming services like Spotify, Deezer or YouTube simply cannot be handled manually anymore. Accounting all of this data correctly while at the same time offering the transparency artists demand nowadays has become a massive challenge for record labels and rights holders.”


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