If you’re running a music business—you’ll probably face many challenges as you develop your company into an industry leader. These can include managing royalties; working with record labels; managing logistical problems; handling social media; and finding the best musicians.
Who said it was always simple to run a music business, right?
But it’s not all bad news. Music companies can use various tools to make running their business more straightforward, and some of the biggest tools include catalog management and royalty accounting.
Here are some of our latest tips on music business management:
Catalog Management
You’ll Keep Track of Music
There are many benefits to using a catalog management system—but one of the most significant pros is how it keeps track of your company's music and the associated metadata without losing it.
This can include release dates, song titles, genre, album titles, and much more. If you have this information easily accessible, you can always find the information when you must make informed decisions about your music business.
You Have More Monetization Options
Similarly, the ability to monetize the music through a catalog management system is highly beneficial. You can quickly choose which songs create the most revenue, if and where people are streaming the music, and how much your company earns from each channel.
As a result, this information is crucial when seeking sponsorship deals, planning tours and gigs, and handling contracts.
You’ll Have Better Marketing
Catalog management is also fantastic for marketing and promoting music. For instance, you can identify target markets and create marketing campaigns that truly resonate with your client’s audience once you know which songs are performing well.
In return, you can use marketing tactics to grow your business. Remember, it’s harder to market yourself without the ability to track your songs and know the key data.
You’ll Streamline Workflows
There’s nothing more important than speeding up the business process, reducing miscommunications and errors, and providing better overall service, right?
Here’s the good news: Catalog management software will help you achieve these because you can easily find the information required to manage music and grow your business.
You’ll Have IP Protection
Failure to protect IP can ruin your entire music business. Catalog management can rapidly spot instances of copyright infringement because it keeps track of music and metadata. In turn, it can help you take legal action to protect your rights if someone has breached your intellectual property. Consequently, you can always ensure your business is entirely compensated for its output.
In truth, catalog management—with the evolving digital world—has never been such an important part of running a music business. It’ll help you achieve many key objectives, regardless of the type of music business you run.
Royalty Accounting
Royalty accounting has become an essential tool for music businesses. There are far too many files and digital streams of music to do it manually in 2023, and it’ll only become more complicated. You need software that can handle your royalty accounting in a secure way that prevents any mistakes.
Here are some of the top reasons why you need royalty accounting:
You Can Manage License Agreements
One of the main benefits of using software that handles your royalties is being able to manage license agreements.
They are a crucial source of income, enabling record labels and music publishers to earn money from TV shows, adverts, films, etc. Unfortunately, due to the sheer scale of the digital world, there are many licenses required in the music industry.
But here’s the most important part: You can ensure you maximize company earnings and protect your intellectual property by tracking your license agreements through royalty accounting software.
You’ll Have Copyright Protection
Protecting your music business from copyright is essential as you become more successful. With the growing digital market, copyright infringement—especially through social media platforms—is becoming more widespread.
Royalty accounting can prevent this by tracking earnings and royalties, thus finding any unauthorized use of work or copyright infringement.
You Can Use Revenue Tracking
Perhaps the most important advantage of royalties accounting is simply being able to track your record label or publisher’s income.
By using software that allows you to track earnings—including revenue from downloaded streams, physical sales, and other sources—you’ll ensure you’re receiving the right income. In addition, proper revenue tracking helps you make more informed decisions about your business, negotiate better contracts, and how to plan for future deals.
Better Scalability
Another reason why music companies should use royalty accounting software is the excellent scalability because of how much data it can handle. That’s incredibly important for music companies that have a large music catalog with different contracts and licenses.
Moreover, royalty accounting software enables music companies to manage their information and data in a centralized database, resulting in better tracking of royalty calculations because the software can automatically create royalty statements and invoices based on the terms of each contract.
Likewise, royalty accounting software can automate the entire process, making it more effortless to generate reports that comply with industry standards.
Release Building and Sharing Software
Releasing new music is exciting for any music business; in fact, it’s essential to release new music when building a successful company. However, the process of distributing and creating new music is time-consuming and complex; it needs extremely careful attention to detail and planning.
But here’s the great news: You can use a tool that uses release-building software to streamline the entire process, thus reducing mistakes and making the process stress-free. Better still, it removes significant time from the process.
Here are some of the top reasons you should use release-building software for music business management:
You’ll Save Time
You’ll always want to save time when running a music company. After all, saving time boosts employee productivity and work ethic. By using release-building software, you can save time because your business can easily access music files, lyrics, and other key information.
These benefits help you stay consistent when releasing songs—and that gives a strong impression to fans, stakeholders, and industry professionals.
You Can Customize Releases
Another reason you need release-building software is the advantage of customizing your releases for different platforms. You can effortlessly create individual releases for digital download platforms, physical formats, and stream services when you use release-building software.
Furthermore, customizable releases help boost your revenue, reach a wider audience, and ensure the music is available in the fan's preferred formats.
You’ll Meet Industry Standards
It’s always essential to meet industry standards and requirements when you’re a music professional—and you can use release-building software to achieve this. For example, you may need guidance on how to format metadata and build ISRC codes when releasing new music.
As a result, by meeting industry standards across the board, you’ll ensure your music business is free from legal issues.
Your Employees Can Collaborate Better
A release-building tool can facilitate collaboration between employees at your business. Likewise, it can allow you to work with other stakeholders in a collaborative and innovative platform.
For instance, you can work with a producer to fine-tune a song; after that, you can work with a graphic designer to create album artwork that fits the music. By bringing everyone together in the same place, release-building tools ensure your business creates high-quality music with the best people.
