All of us understand that tracking the paperwork related to royalties and rights ownership is an absolute mess.
Previously, artists faced the daunting task of determining compensation proportions instead of crafting their music. A huge sigh of relief came with the shift to online music distribution because now everything is handled digitally.
Many platforms, for a while now, have been relieving the burden of handling royalties for businesses. They’ve developed from providing basic services like uploading tracks to streaming platforms to offering proprietary business services which manage splits, payments, and reporting. It’s the best possible way to automate business processes: maximum artist support and no spreadsheets for managers.
Why Automation is Effective
When multiple people are involved in creating a track, such as a vocalist and a producer, the chances of complications arise when settling compensation. Fortunately, today’s technology can fully automate time-consuming business tasks for everyone.
Businesses no longer need to worry about handling accounting due to the automation of royalty accounting with preset ownership splits. For instance, Sonomo’s digital distribution platform “automatically manages royalty accounting” which takes care of subsidiary rights owners’ share calculations and directs payments accordingly. But Sonomo is not the only one; other platforms like MusicAlligator are developing similar functionalities for easier rights and royalty resolution automations for creators of all levels.
What These Platforms Particularly Do
Let’s examine what a robust online music distribution platform can streamline concerning rights and royalties:
- Ownership Splits: You need to input who the stakeholders are and their respective percentages one time only, as the system remembers it for future use; no repeating needed for subsequent releases.
- Automatic Royalty Calculations: Streaming or download earnings are calculated and allocated per the predefined ownership structure with no extra input necessary.
- Payment Routing: Contributors’ royalties are credited directly to their digital wallets or bank accounts. No intermediary, no chance of failed payment, no awkward follow-up needed, and no future conversations.
- Contributor Invites: Platforms such as MusicAlligator allow for inviting other collaborators to a release. Each participant checks their share, tracks payment distribution, and documents payout in real-time, ensuring everything is above board.
- Reporting Without Delays: Want a last week’s revenue recap? Want to identify the highest-performing track? Real-time data dashboards show income visualization by song, geography, and several more layers of granularity.
Why It’s a Game-Changer
If you think about it, an independent artist or label used to need to hire someone to manage everything as systems were completely manual. For such people, it meant managing spreadsheets, an endless number of emails, and burning the midnight oil in the process, not spending it in the right way at all. Thankfully, MusicAlligator does everything in the background these days.
That’s radically different from the past. It enhances productivity, as there are new levels of convenience and accuracy. In addition, it empowers everyone involved to receive appropriate payment whenever necessary. Trust, that was previously elusive, can now be earned thanks to streamlining complex micromanagement, including payments. Everything moves at a breakneck pace now.
Final Thoughts
Today, especially with collaboration being the norm, speed automation is needed in every activity. Smart distribution has also simplified issues of ownership and royalty payments, using a single automated service effectively and logically.
Do yourself a favor; if you find yourself lost in an endless loop of juggling between payment chasing and spreadsheets, you know exactly the strategy to avoid all of it – find a service that automates everything for you while you focus completely on managing your tasks.