Societies

“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.

For years music publishers have learned to live within a strange paradigm. Chatter around the industry is endlessly about innovation, data, efficiency and the collaboration required to realise gains for all. Yet for all the discussion, the data sets relied upon for collecting and attributing royalties continue to operate with significant limitations- none of which need to be spelled out here. Publishers, despite best efforts, often only discover issues after value has already

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 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

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

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.