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Business News Digital Labels & Publishers
Rights management firm says its new data product could help with mechanical rights issues in the US
By Chris Cooke | Published on Thursday 17 March 2016
What with all the songwriter lawsuits piling up against the streaming services over unpaid mechanical royalties, shitty music rights data is something of a talking point in the US at the moment. Now, American music rights management firm Music Reports has announced a new product at South By South West which, it says, “addresses one of the biggest challenges in the $4 billion music publishing industry by bringing a revolutionary level of transparency to a decades-old problem”.
The new Music Reports ‘claiming system’ allows music publishers to more easily claim any recordings that embody songs they control, and for that information to then be kept alongside other data relating to the creation and ownership of the song in question.
There are various issues around music rights data, of course, both in the US and worldwide, though the missing database at the heart of the various mechanical rights disputes between American songwriters and the streaming services is the one that states which songs are contained in which recordings – so which locks the ISRC code that identifies the recording to the ISWC code that identifies the song.
There has been disagreement in the past as to whether such a database – especially one that could be made publicly available – is the responsibility of the digital services, the record labels or the music publishers, though the latter arguably benefits from it more.
Music Reports says its new system will make it much easier for publishers to log which recordings are linked to their songs. Claims will then be “validated by Music Reports’ research department of 40 musicologists” and, where there is no conflict, song licensing on those recordings will be much more efficient, especially from labels and digital services utilising the US compulsory licence that covers mechanical rights.
Says the firm’s VP and General Counsel Bill Colitre: “Music Reports’ new claiming system is an absolute game changer for the music industry because it solves the ‘unmatched recordings’ problem – a problem that is increasing exponentially”.
He goes on: “The claiming system offers the publishing community the opportunity to bring its expertise to bear on the area it knows best: its own catalogue. By providing publishers unprecedented access to match recordings and source music publishing information in this way, Music Reports is flipping a historical problem on its head and helping to ensure that every song is licensed, and every royalty is paid”.
