Data

As music business models grow more diverse and complex the need for clear and consistent metadata and copyright management information (CMI) to track song plays and disperse royalties grows more acute. But efforts to date to bring more harmony to the industry’s data layer have been frustrated by is legacy of ad hoc and idiosyncratic record keeping,  fragmented rights and a complex stew of contracts, statutory licenses and exemptions.

Yet progress is slowly, if fitfully being made.

Two core industry initiatives aim to compile comprehensive databases containing International Standard Recording Codes (ISRC) and International Standard Musical Works Codes (ISWC).

Akin to International Standard Book Numbers (ISDN), the ISRC standard seeks to assign a unique identifier to each sound recording and music video recording, while ISWC assigns a unique identifier to each musical work or composition.

The ultimate goal is to to then link the two databases so that the industry or private parties can build rights lookup tools identifying both the song writer and recording artists for every track.

Unfortunately, neither ISRCs nor ISWCs have been consistently or systematically applied over the years. While both IRSC and ISWC were adopted as international standards by the ISO in 1980s, each country has its own administrative agency for them, which have often followed different rules and conventions for applying the numbers.

Record companies also followed different protocols. While some  labels applied different ISRC numbers to the U.S. and international releases of the same recording, for instance, others used the same for both. So while it’s rare that two different recordings share the same ISRC, it’s not uncommon to find the same recording with multiple ISRCs.

“We’re working now on disambiguating that,” Recording Industry Association of America chief technology officer David Hughes said at the Copyright & Technology conference in New York this week. “The first thing we have to do is make sure we’re dealing with the exact same recording of the exact same underlying song and assign a number to that. The next step will be to link that database to an IWRC database. Then on top of that the industry or private parties can start building the sort of look-up rights database we need.”

The RIAA oversees the the ISRC system in the U.S.

Not everyone in the industry is convinced its worth the effort, however.

“Our challenge is that it’s not the assembly of the raw data that drives the business, it’s the business rules,” Harry Fox Agency (HFA) president and CEO Micheal Simon said.

HFA, now part of performing rights organization SESAC, collects mechanical royalties on behalf of songwriters.

“Whenever data replicates it fragments, it degrades,” Simon warned. “Just the simple process of extracting the data from our data environment and putting it into your environment, means it will change, it will not be the same when it gets there. So we scratch our heads when people talk about creating a global database that will always be authoritative, current.”

In the meantime, some individual players in the business are forging ahead on their own databases and rights administration platforms, such as the Spotify’s recently announced Songwriters and Publishers Administration System.

“In absence of a universal system, a lot of ad hoc systems have been developed,” Hughes acknowledged. “It may be that in many circumstances those ad hoc systems are adequate, even if they’re not 100 percent accurate. But if we want to make that the money is always going into the right hands we need to be comprehensive.”

The music industry’s efforts to tackle its metadata challenges will be a featured topic at the Smart Content Summit in Los Angeles on February 4th. Music Business Association VP of digital strategy and business development Bill Wilson will be joined by other industry executives to discuss the challenges and to provide an overview of how various industry initiatives are faring.

Other topics at the Summit will include:

• End-to-end data management strategies
• Simplifying data collection for content creators
• Content intelligence
• The integration of asset management and rights management

Click here for more information on the Summit and to register.