Data in Music

There was a moment, not that long ago, when music rights acquisitions felt almost mechanical- streaming growth was steady, capital was abundant. The underwriting conversation revolved around a small set of variables: historical cashflow, growth assumptions, discount rate, and multiple. If you believed in the long-term durability and expansion of streaming, the rest followed.

Music rights are nuanced, and always have been. Creative collaboration, shared ownership, territorial differences, long tails of value, and cultural context are all part of what makes music operationally distinct from many other industries. There is, however, an important distinction to be made between nuance and friction.

“We are a defacto data company. We don’t work in the music industry-  we work in the data industry.” This quote from Caroline Champarnaud of SACEM speaks deeply to the operational reality of a modern collecting society- though it resonates far beyond that context, into the very fabric of music publishing and copyright administration in the modern age. The more I’ve thought about it since, the more it feels like an accurate description of the publishing ecosystem.

Top songs are what attract capital. Music, and entertainment at large, is a hits driven business. This may be true, as most of the value magnetises to the ‘head’ of catalogs, but it doesn’t mean that everything else has no value. In fact- the truth is far from it. Large catalogs can offered history, predictability, and a level of institutional comfort that made underwriting easier- let alone the base level of recognizability and ‘icon’ status that marketing departments dream

Competitive advantage in music is often framed around ownership, but data provides an equally powerful advantage. Serious operators across the music ecosystem are all looking at broadly the same raw data inputs (keeping in mind last week’s look at how data is no longer a scarce resource)- with cloud infrastructure and AI flattening the technical barriers to entry. Data is no longer the differentiator it once was.

For years, conversations around music data have revolved around access- to global copyright databases, better royalty data, deeper DSP reporting (+ the terms of DSP licenses). Data in this framing is treated as a scarce resource- something hoarded, guarded, and used to justify competitive advantage. The great news is the tide has shifted in recent years, meaning this framing no longer holds.

There’s a recurring dichotomy in how music publishing ‘value’ is discussed. The media conversation clusters around the headline acquisition of iconic catalogs and blockbuster songwriters- the “big deals” naturally command attention. They are tangible, easy to explain, and fit the narrative that music IP behaves like a financial asset. However there is also a real engine of value outside those deals that make the music headlines. There is still material revenue to be found ac

The music industry runs on identifiers. Without them, the complex ecosystem of recordings, compositions, rights, and royalties would quickly collapse into chaos (... more so than it already is). The two most critical identifiers are ISRC and ISWC- the codes that uniquely define distinct audio recordings and song compositions respectively. Their existence looks simple on the surface, but they represent both different philosophies and underpin key workflows and challenges in at

Imagine trying to value a ring in a jewellery store, but wearing a blindfold. You can sense the outlines, feel the cut of the stone and setting, but the fine detail- the information that actually determines whether you’re about to buy a diamond or a dud- is obscured. That’s where many funds still find themselves today. Investment decisions are often made with incomplete or unreliable data. Acquisition packs are full of disparate (and static) spreadsheets

The conversation around “independence” in the modern music industry has come to the fore in recent weeks, and is getting harder to define. The major music companies have always built to consolidate power and position- not just through powerful content ownership, but via distribution and now through data.

After data (which, have no fear, is going to feature) the economic landscape for music publishing in a digital world is one of my favourite topics to explore. Well… alongside licensing frameworks, systemic politics, global society pipelines- which are all, of course, different facets of the same dynamic. Whichever way you look at it, songs don’t receive value on par with what’s shared by the rest of the industry. And even when value is ascribed, it’s struggling to get through

The pace of change is accelerating. This week we released a new, free tool on the Fix Music website: a clean, simple way to retrieve recording metadata- including ISRCs, artwork, release info and more- from any Spotify link, in downloadable bulk format. No login. No fee. No strings. It’s already helping users save time and get what they need, fast. And… it was entirely built by AI.

That’s right. Another newsletter about data in the music industry. It’s a hill I’m willing to die on- that data is the critical lifeblood of the entire ecosystem, and that those who grasp this the quickest will be the ones who accelerate their businesses the fastest.

We’ve been exploring the MLC data since 2021. It’s not the only dataset we use at Fix, but it’s certainly one of the more fascinating. Here are five things the MLC data tells us that every publisher should know.

Metadata is the oil that keeps the Music Publishing engine running. It defines what’s registered, what’s matched, and ultimately, what (and who) gets paid. But unlike your typical crude oil, rights data isn’t fungible or easily traded- it’s locked in silos, guarded as proprietary, and scattered across a network of databases and gatekeepers.

100,000+ recordings released and 10,000+ songs registered per day. Is this an opportunity, or a data nightmare?