Let’s talk about data management in the music business. As you may already know, Reprtoir is a SaaS solution for record labels and music publishing companies to manage their assets, contracts, releases and all sorts of data. For instance our features are based on Catalog Management thanks to a CMS, specifically built for audio files and music metadata, and for musical works. Let’s take this chance to highlight the need to integrate interoperability and shareability from the beginning when it comes to these kinds of assets.
If you work in the music industry you know that there are a lot of moving parts. It’s the nature of the beast. With all of these moving parts, interoperability becomes key, especially when we are talking about music metadata standards.
A business is a machine.
You know, composed of moving parts and designed to perform a specific objective.
As such, if the components of the machine fail to work together – the whole thing rips itself apart. A business – especially a music business is no different. In this article, we break down your music business into its critical parts. The roles they play and why data management is the oil that keeps this machine running smoothly.
How to Drive Your Music Business Forward
In order to keep this business moving forward – all of the components need to be working together – so what are some of these parts?
Assets – Your assets are a huge part of your interaction with your audience. Whether they be audio, video, CMS or metadata, keeping track of data related to these assets is an obvious place to start. Let’s face it, most of the music industry happens online in this day and age, and music metadata standards aren’t an option anymore.
As such, things like engagement, conversion and these digital-marketing-related metrics tell a lot about what kind of content is working. And what isn’t. Keeping up to date on these is crucial to fostering the community you need to as a label, or tracking performance as a publisher.
Contracts – Keeping track of and fulfilling contracts is another vital part of participating in the industry. In order to do this correctly, you need to stay on top of things.
Because of the way this industry is structured - nothing is worse for a label’s reputation than violating contracts with collaborators. Most labels don’t set out to do this intentionally – it is often a result of disorganization. Luckily, we have some solutions to keep top of all of this digital age music business data to elaborate on below!
Royalties – Sync, mechanical and performing royalties are regulated by several different organizations from all over the world. They each have their own rates and rules and that means that once again, data management is crucial to understanding how the music is performing in areas like broadcast, film, television and podcasts.
Adapting to the Age of Music Data Management
With the music business digitizing and in turn opening itself up to the masses, a lot has changed. It’s no longer about just recording an album and hitting the road. The business is still about the music but it’s also about content, it’s about engagement with the fans – your game has to be deep, without a doubt.
Just as digitization has done to so many industries, the paradox of opening up the music industry to the masses and simultaneously saturating it has put music data management high up on the priority list.
The data is what allows you to understand your audience and what they respond to. The data helps you understand how your audience interprets you – what position you hold in their mind. Not only that but as a music pro, you already know that your reputation among industry peers is just as important as with the audience.
Having a grasp on the b2b data, in turn, becomes as critical as the content data and asset data. Not to mention the mailbox money, of course. Keeping track of this data is incredibly important to navigating the murky world of deals, splits and contracts that music industry professionals inhabit.
Industry-Leading Technology for music business
Simply getting a hold of all of this data used to be a daunting task, however as the industry has evolved, technology is keeping up. Reprtoir is a cutting-edge software as a service (SaaS) platform that has been designed to specialize in helping music businesses adapt to the digital age of the industry.
By consolidating all of the music businesses data into one place, the teams that make up record labels and music publishers can save incredible amounts of time collecting data and gain a more accurate picture than was possible before.
With one workspace acting as a hub for all of the moving parts that make up your music business, you can move the whole thing as one. Interoperability is built into Reprtoir’s CMS systems and data management solutions. Manage audio and video assets or use our Release Builder solution to streamline your distribution. Using Reprtoir, music industry professionals can roll with the evolution of the music industry and harness the incredible power of data to drive themselves forward. Get in touch with us now!
