Fragmentation of Rights

This week we pick up where that one left off- what happens after the price has been paid and the claim has to become a working reality across every system that pays. Operators should be under no illusion that once a deal completes- the paperwork is signed (with the lawyers laughing all the way to the bank), the cash has gone out and the press release is scheduled- the real work begins. On paper, the catalog now belongs to the fund- but of course the industry's systems don't

A few weeks ago, in Rights Without Borders, I made the point that qualifying repertoire can be pulled out of collective management and licensed directly, while BIEM repertoire effectively cannot because in the BIEM world the society owns the mechanical right rather than merely administering it. The obvious follow-up question, and the one I get asked most often by publishers somewhere between independent and major, is: fine- but should we?

In the 1970s it took an average of 1.7 songwriters to write a hit, today it takes around 4.5. That's a 165% increase, and the number is still climbing- Beyoncé's ‘Heated' carries eighteen credited writers alone. Since the 90s there has been a slowly increasing trend to sample and interpolate, and it is quietly doing something to publishing data that the industry's registration systems were always unlikely to be able to absorb.

Last week we followed a single stream from a listener in Hamburg to a songwriter's bank account, and found it splitting into multiple royalty chains before it had travelled anywhere at all. There was one element we touched upon, but only at a high level: why the same song, streamed in the same place, can be processed through entirely different machinery depending on who wrote it.

The gap between the play and the payment is where the music industry lives, and it is almost completely invisible, including to plenty of people who work in music. This week let's follow one stream all the way through, and look at every place it can go wrong.

US termination rights have been somewhat of an industry secret in times gone by- and understandably so given their creator friendly purpose. For any not familiar, this is the legal right of a songwriter to reclaim US rights they have previously transferred (say under a publishing deal) after 35 years. These sit quietly inside a catalog for years, sometimes decades, looking like a future technicality rather than a present commercial issue.

A significant portion of the last decade in the Music Industry has been spent discussing capital inflows. Billions has poured into catalogs, billions into infrastructure and billions into technology and platforms. This week the latest turn in that saga is being reported- that Sony Music Group is in advanced talks to acquire Recognition for $4Bn. This is particularly illustrative of a wider dynamic emerging across the market- how does the money leave?

As we all know, the conversation around music catalog investments has become increasingly sophisticated as the asset class has matured. The ability to identify, administer, and ultimately collect the income attached to rights is a deep specialism- and one that cannot be synthesized or sidestepped by AI.

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.

For decades, sub-publishers formed the backbone of the global music publishing network- local partners handling collections, licensing, and promotion in markets where a publisher lacked direct presence. They were the trusted representatives on the ground, fluent in the local language, culture, and society politics and nuance. But in today’s hyper-connected, digitally-driven industry, consumption has become overwhelmingly global.

The music industry has never been short on creativity- but in the smaller Publishing niche it’s often been sadly short on collaboration. Not between songwriters, producers, or artists- but between the organisations, systems, and standards that underpin how the business actually serves these creators. For an industry built on relationships, too much of our data and infrastructure operates like a walled garden.

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

There’s never been a better time to be a global music fan. Korean pop groups dominate the Billboard charts. Latin megastars headline the world’s biggest festivals. Afrobeats is on everyone's playlists. A user in Jakarta can stream a Nashville singer-songwriter seconds after their release… music’s reach is truly borderless.