As you might already know, Reprtoir was built by a licensing team in need of an internal tool to manage catalogs. This data management implies taking care of a load of data of course, but it also being able to guarantee the safety of these informations, that can be sensitive for the music industry. If you put all your catalog’s metadata online, we get how important it is to be sure that everything about royalty splits, contracts, right holders or contributors is in safe hands.
Taking care of your own data as a professional in the music industry
As a Software as a Service (SaaS) for the music industry, we get how important this particular issue can be when you decide to use an external tool to manage your own data as a label, producer or publisher. This is why we built Reprtoir’s core e, to be as performant as possible. Technology is ubiquitous in Reprtoir, everything is thought to run smoothly.
It goes without saying that a performing engine means adapting to added storage, whatever the volume. As a user, you always have someone to reach out to and never have to develop a tool yourself. Everything is safely kept at the same place and can be reached by your team from anywhere.
As for the security of the platform itself, to guarantee the best, we decided to apply the same strategy: ask the ones who can do it best! This is why everything we build on Reprtoir is hosted on Amazon Web Services. That way, we can insure end-to-end security and privacy features including encryption algorithms. If you have any question, you can visit our Security page, and don’t hesitate to reach out, we’re always glad to help!
Taking care of your own privacy before collaborating with the exterior makes sense, and you should be thinking about it first. Capitalize on what you can trust, and this is exactly what we intend to do with a modern platform for recording companies and music publishers to manage their music catalogs and works. Next step: thinking about how you deal with data and how to match the privacy rules.
What are the main data challenges in the music industry?
Music professionals have to face an increasing volume of data, so what are the tools and methods you should be using? The lack of collaboration in the music industry regarding data management leads to a lot of different ways to answer the problem, that are usually not optimal. Let me guide you through it.
To each track, there are metadata attached. That involves contributors, right holders, royalty splits and every little details linked to the track. Along the technological change, the volume of metadata keeps growing and record companies, music producers and publishers have to find solutions to deal with it. Since there are no universal way to deal with this, music industry players get creative.
So, some labels build their own tool internally. Some others keep working on spreadsheets. All in all, everyone comes up with a different solution to manage internally, but not especially thinking of external collaboration. Sending and sharing data to a client and/or partner becomes quite a time loss and generates unnecessary administrative costs.
But more importantly, fragmented datasets and manual methods imply more mistakes. We are still humans and entering informations one by one and transferring them from systems to systems will create more occasions to make an error. In the end, this will impact payments to artists; if you don’t have the right informations, how can you always be sure to pay the right person on time?
As of today there are no regulations or common tools to be able to insure the veracity of all those (meta)data. In addition, music professionals have to be able to navigate through their dataset to meet the different regulations depending on countries.
This is what we wanted to create with Reprtoir: a unique working space to insure the (meta)data quality and following the chain of rights in one look. And we did! It is possible to import metadata and verify them, on a secured platform, and follow the evolution from the same space. To us, this is where the professional methods are headed to.
Staying ahead of the curve: anticipating data management in the music industry
So now that we’ve established the core problem for the music business, what’s next? What can labels, publishers, producers can do to optimize their work and be resilient?
First off, we can’t keep relying on data infrastructures built for the analogue era. There is room for improvement in managing data in the music industry. It is now too difficult to follow every new specificity on every track. Add to this the trend of home made creations, and this simply becomes impossible.
Then, we need more transparency, to be able to gather accurate data and build a better data flow. Duplicating systems and missing key data ends up adding up to the already complex data management system for producers and publishers.
The best way to deal with the problem is to anticipate a change that will come to you in any case. Knowing how to use and capitalize on data in essential, and adding an external solution managed by a team of professionals can only help you manage your own music catalog. The next step is to be able to collaborate with other actors, and for this, you need to have the right tools.
The music industry has had record-breaking results from streaming. The music industry relies on digital canals and it is only logical that professional methods be adapted. We built Reprtoir because we strongly believe that record labels, music producers and publishers won’t be working the same way within a few years. It is now a question of adapting and anticipating a change that is coming in the music industry.
