Data Digest: a round-up of our latest data initiatives
Educating the industry on RDx
The global repertoire data exchange service RDx, commissioned by IFPI and WIN working together on behalf of the global recording industry and built and run by PPL, is now fully operational, providing a supply chain for performance rights data among multiple record companies and multiple collective management organisations (CMOs) to help improve the accuracy of distributions worldwide. Read more about the benefits of RDx here.
On completion of a 12-month project to implement and test the systems, RDx was launched on time and on budget – and is now live and exchanging production data between the participating parties. A number of leading record companies, including Beggars Group, Sony Music, state51 Music Group, and Universal Music Group have already joined RDx to upload their repertoire data, and over a million registrations of their repertoire data have already been processed by RDx.
PPL and Re:Sound (Canada) were the first CMOs to receive production data from RDx, and GRAMEX (Finland) and SENA (The Netherlands) will also be replacing their legacy data feeds with data from the RDx system later this year. Further record companies and CMOs will join RDx in the coming months, with a series of webinars currently being held to educate and explain how to on-board. The first of the webinars welcomed 87 attendees from 30 organisations in more than 15 countries, demonstrating the interest in RDx and beginning the next phase of rolling it out.
Organisations interested in RDx should visit https://www.rdx-portal.org/ for further information.
New DDEX standard on the way
For the past 15 months, PPL has been working with the other members of the DDEX Repertoire Data and Rights Working Group to develop a new data standard, for use by organisations to exchange data about revenues from performance rights and how they have been allocated to recording rightsholders and performers for the use of their recordings.
This will allow CMOs to provide more detailed and transparent information about revenue allocations to each other and to members, in a standardised way. Over time, this will make the frequent exchanges of this data more efficient, as well as enabling CMOs to provide detail to their members about the breakdown of revenues collected internationally from other CMOs.
PPL collects revenue internationally on behalf of more than 90,000 performers and recording rightsholders, through more than 100 agreements with other CMOs, and collecting this revenue involves frequent data exchanges – so PPL will particularly benefit from improved standardisation of this data. Following a period of consultation within the DDEX membership in August and September, the first version of the new “Recording Data and Rights Revenue Reporting Standard” is due to be published for industry use later this year.
Music Biz Metadata Summit 2020
PPL attended the Music Biz Metadata Summit 2020, joining a number of thought leaders from across the global music data, rightsholder, and creative communities. Delegates enjoyed panels focusing on how to improve metadata collection and processing, standardise information across established and emerging global music markets, and make it easier for metadata novices to learn all the essential “jargon” and processes. If this sounds of interest, you can view the full agenda here and mark it in your calendar for 2021.
