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Business News Digital Labels & Publishers
New songwriter identifier to launch in bid to tackle the black box problem
By Chris Cooke | Published on Tuesday 18 January 2022
Family In Music – which is, and I quote, “building a new music creator network that will revolutionise the way [creators] work and get paid” – has announced one of the specific initiatives it is launching which aims to help grassroots songwriters get on top of their data and pull monies they are due out of the music industry’s big black box of unallocated royalties.
The initiative is called MgNTa and is mainly aimed at songwriters who are not currently members of a collecting society, so don’t have access to the music industry’s key data identifiers and databases which are managed as part of the collective licensing system.
Via MgNTa, writers will get a unique identifier, and will be able to log information about their music rights, with some of that data stored on the blockchain.
The plan is to then connect with the societies and digital services to identify uses of those writers’ works, so that they can claim royalties they are due and which are probably currently ending up in the aforementioned black box, which is often then ultimately distributed across the music industry by market share, meaning the money doesn’t reach any grassroots writers.
Quite how that will all work is still being evolved. As described in the MMF Song Royalties Guide, the processing of song royalties is complex – and often inaccurate and inefficient – even with streaming royalties where there is extensive and accurate data about what music has been used.
Some of those issues can be addressed by better data management on an individual songwriter or publisher basis – which is where schemes like MgNTa can help – although some of it requires industry wide solutions, which is where firms like Family In Music need to interact and work with more traditional players in the music rights industry. And that can be a challenge.
Still, it’s another interesting venture to address a very real problem for songwriters and the wider music community. And Family In Music has plenty of industry knowledge and contacts within its core team, it being led by led by AWAL co-founder Kevin Bacon and former U2 manager Tim Delaney.
“With Family in Music I’m able to consolidate all my experience in one place and MgNTa is something we are both proud of and are certain is desperately needed”, says Bacon, who is Chief Innovation Officer at the company. “Whilst technology saved the music industry it has never been kind to songwriters and our mission is to address that gap”.
Delaney, who is Managing Director, adds: “There has been much debate about streaming generally and the low levels of remuneration for songwriters. But what about those getting nothing at all? Family In Music doesn’t take for granted that if someone is writing great songs they know how to get rewarded for that song. It’s an age-old problem and we have the thoroughly modern solution using technology to aid the writer rather than harm them”.
