DDEX – RightsTech Project

Sin screen-shot-2016-03-22-at-16-56-17 ce the demise of the long-running-but-never-launched Global Repertoire Database (GRD) there has been a lot of debate over what comes next for digital rights reporting. The songwriter class action suits in the US against Spotify are the natural outcome of more than one and a half decades of failing to deal with the forsaken mess that is compositional rights in the digital era.

The music industry needs a solution and now just like busses that never come, two arrive at once: Google’s Open Source Validation Tool for DDEX Standard (doesn’t sound too sexy I know, but bear with me on this one) and Canadian PRO (Performing Rights Organization) SOCAN has acquired Medianet essentially as a digital rights reporting play. So just what is going on in the world of digital rights reporting?

Source: Medianet, SOCAN, YouTube And The Kobalt Effect | Music Industry Blog

YouTube has built a new tool which it says will deliver ‘more accurate reporting of music content’ to music publishers and collection societies. As a result, the Google-owned business believes it will set into motion ‘a faster and more accurate payout and distribution of royalties’.

The new tech is pretty… technical sounding: a new open-source implementation and validation tool for DDEX’s Digital Sales Report Flat File (DSRF). In a nutshell, that’s the industry standard format for digital licensees to report sales and usage to music licensors for both audio and audio-visual content.

Source: YouTube launches tool to enable ‘faster, more accurate royalty distributions’ – Music Business Worldwide