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Monokrome launches new rights audit service
By Chris Cooke | Published on Thursday 28 November 2019
Music services company Monokrome Music has followed up the recent launch of its RightsHub platform with a new service called RightsAudit, which will help artists, songwriters, managers and labels review and organise all the rights in their respective catalogues.
The new service complements RightsHub, which Monokrome defines as “an online contractual rights and file management platform for labels, artists, managers, and other rightsholders”. With RightsAudit, specialist staff will provide a more hands-on service to help clients stay on top of all the music rights they own or represent.
According to the company, that includes ensuring that clients are working within their contractual obligations, that tracks are registered with all the collecting societies worldwide, and that there is timely reporting across the supply chain. Plus checking the status of things like rights reversions and generally “taking control of rights and data”.
As well as launching the new service, Monokrome has also announced an expansion of its team. The new audit service will be run in partnership with Unique Uncut, a new business launched by Graham Luckhurst, who was formerly Director Of Operations at Mr Bongo. Meanwhile Sam Taylor, who advises a range of music and technology businesses, as well as being an associate at CMU, joins Monokrome as Head Of Commercial Partnerships.
Confirming all this, Monokrome boss Lee Morrison says that the new rights audit service has “been a long time coming”.
“Since I was the Head Of Digital for Skint/Loaded Records I’ve felt the need for a service like this”, he adds. “While organising the catalogue for digital distribution there was a lot of heading to the back of the warehouse to gather information from paper contracts. Masters were all over the place and often there was no artwork or decent metadata – and this was a fairly organised label!”
“As each year passes and catalogues grow”, he goes on, “the data required by DSPs and other services only increases. Managing catalogue data is often the last thing rightsholders actually do. RightsAudit is all about them keeping their most valuable commodity in its best condition – after all, those rights equal money. It’s imperative that labels keep full and up to date records of their catalogues. Many are at risk of litigation by acting outside of term; and it’s important to keep up as data requirements constantly change across services”.
