‘Reporting income to rights owners is becoming ever more complex ‘
The following viewpoint was written by Ray Bush (pictured), managing director of The Music Royalty Company, which provides all aspects of accountancy as well as royalty services for record labels, distributors, music publishers and others.
In recent years we, as an industry, have become very used to the idea of label and artist service offerings, whereby instead of using a one-size-fits-all solution certain services can be outsourced to better match the requirements of the particular label/artist/campaign/project.
Those services tend to be heavily weighted towards marketing, promotion and distribution but the idea of outsourcing some key areas of financial administration is still relatively new. Most labels have third party accountants to do things like book keeping, VAT returns and year-end accounts but there are still many who are perhaps unaware of the benefits of having experts oversee more specialist areas such as royalty accounting.
With the massive growth and evolution of revenue streams from downloads and audio/video streaming the task of accurately reporting income to rights owners, performers and songwriters is becoming ever more complex and the expertise and technology required to do this effectively ever more specialist.
The days of simply manually imputting this data into a spreadsheet are long gone. Hiring and retaining an in-house team to do this work, particularly for independent labels, is expensive and the implementation of the software and technology required can be very prohibitive. This means that companies like ours can play a vital role in ensuring the financial well being and stability of small and medium sized music companies.
By doing the heavy lifting on jobs such as PPL registrations, royalties, accounts, mechanical liabilities, payroll or indeed any of the administrative duties that are time consuming, expensive or, frankly dull, we also allow these companies to concentrate their efforts on the creative aspects of their business such as A&R and marketing.
It is important to note that because companies like ours are forensic in our approach to royalty audits we often save clients money through finding wrong royalties rates being applied and ensuring that costs are overseen and recharged properly.
As the music industry becomes ever more engaged in a world of micro payments and hugely diversified income streams from online activity it is vital that companies start to focus on how best to maximise these opportunities and ensure that they and their artists are receiving the money they are due.
New Music Royalty Company Launches with Cooking Vinyl Backing
27 November 2014 – Press release
– Former Essential Head of Finance to head operation
– Staff bring over 50 years of combined experience
– First new client is R&S Records
Cooking Vinyl Group has launched a new co-owned business venture – the Music Royalty Co (MRC).
Set up to help labels and publishers cope with the exponential growth in data associated with music streaming, MRC’s USP is the team’s accountancy nous. This enables it to look beyond just auditing to understand whether the data received in the first place is correct – a valuable insight given the number of accounting errors originating earlier in the supply chain.
Utilising world-leading professional royalty accounting software Counterpoint, MRC also offers audits, US mechanicals, PPL registrations, and CWR files for copyright society registrations, alongside a full accountancy offering.
MRC has also invested significantly in its IT systems to ensure fast processing times and complete security around sensitive client data, including protected backups. Likewise, the company’s online portal enables clients to securely upload data and files directly to its servers.
Based out of offices in London Bridge from January, MRC is managed by co-owner Ray Bush, who has been Head of Finance for Essential Music & Marketing for the last four years. The MRC team also consists of former Cooking Vinyl staff Tegan Sims (Head of Royalties) and Sam Difford (Office Manager), and Gerri Geraghty who is joining the company as Consultant. Together with Bush they boast over 50 years experience in the music industry and have produced over 40,000 statements between them. Cooking Vinyl MD Martin Goldschmidt and Essential MD Mike Chadwick serve as Directors.
As well as delivering royalty services to Cooking Vinyl Records, Essential Music & Marketing, Cooking Vinyl Publishing, CV America and Cooking Vinyl Australia, MRC will work with external clients such as R&S Records.
Replacing Bush as Essential’s Head of Finance will be Joe Gilbert who currently works as Management Accountant for Cooking Vinyl.
Ray Bush said of the new venture: “The explosion in data analysis caused by streaming means there’s never been a more important time for companies to get their royalty processes straight. We believe that there’s a real gap in the market for a company like MRC, which truly understands how those work, and we’re excited to show people what we can do.”
Cooking Vinyl launches new venture to solve royalties conundrum
Rights holders are struggling: many independent labels and publishers are drowning in the mountains of data that are being sent by streaming services on a regular basis, and many don’t have the resources to create a dedicated infrastructure to compute said data, which means that they are essentially unable to verify the royalties received.
To solve this very problem Cooking Vinyl has launched a brand new business called theMusic Royalty Co (MRC), which it co-owns.
The business is a joined venture with Ray Bush (ex Finance Head at Essential) and he will be heading the business. MRC will be relying on third party company Counterpoint for its royalty software.
The website states that the services provided include:
– Royalty Processing
– Copyright Management and Registrations
– Analytics & Sales Solutions
Obviously it would not make much sense if the business was created purely to serve Cooking Vinyl and Essential, so while those businesses will be the core of MRC’s customer base at the company has already signed up Loose Music and R&S Records external clients and – judging by the widespread nature of the problem – should not have too much trouble finding more interested labels pretty quickly if it can deliver on its promise and the price point is viable.
(Andrea Leonelli)
– Former Essential Head of Finance to head operation
– Staff bring over 50 years of combined experience
– First new client is R&S Records
27th November 2014, London:- Cooking Vinyl Group has launched a new co-owned business venture – the Music Royalty Co (MRC).
Set up to help labels and publishers cope with the exponential growth in data associated with music streaming, MRC’s USP is the team’s accountancy nous. This enables it to look beyond just auditing to understand whether the data received in the first place is correct – a valuable insight given the number of accounting errors originating earlier in the supply chain.
Utilising world-leading professional royalty accounting software Counterpoint, MRC also offers audits, US mechanicals, PPL registrations, and CWR files for copyright society registrations, alongside a full accountancy offering.
MRC has also invested significantly in its IT systems to ensure fast processing times and complete security around sensitive client data, including protected backups. Likewise, the company’s online portal enables clients to securely upload data and files directly to its servers.
Based out of offices in London Bridge from January, MRC is managed by co-owner Ray Bush, who has been Head of Finance for Essential Music & Marketing for the last four years. The MRC team also consists of former Cooking Vinyl staff Tegan Sims (Head of Royalties) and Sam Difford (Office Manager), and Gerri Geraghty who is joining the company as Consultant. Together with Bush they boast over 50 years experience in the music industry and have produced over 40,000 statements between them. Cooking Vinyl MD Martin Goldschmidt and Essential MD Mike Chadwick serve as Directors.
As well as delivering royalty services to Cooking Vinyl Records, Essential Music & Marketing, Cooking Vinyl Publishing, CV America and Cooking Vinyl Australia, MRC will work with external clients such as R&S Records.
Replacing Bush as Essential’s Head of Finance will be Joe Gilbert who currently works as Management Accountant for Cooking Vinyl.
Ray Bush said of the new venture: “The explosion in data analysis caused by streaming means there’s never been a more important time for companies to get their royalty processes straight. We believe that there’s a real gap in the market for a company like MRC, which truly understands how those work, and we’re excited to show people what we can do.”
28.11.2014 
Digital+Mobil
Music Royalty Co: Cooking Vinyl launches solution for data flow streaming era
London – labels, publishers and managers have to face in the digital age with a true flood of data. In addressing these datasets wants Royalty Music Co (MRC), a company of Cooking Vinyl Group, continue to assist and to promote a rapid and exact royalties payout.
The boring part of the business
A label can no longer take care of all aspects of the settlement, not to the number of data in streaming on it says MRC manager Ray Bush. This in turn makes it difficult to identify and payment of royalties immensely. “Here MRC comes into play,” said Bush, who was previously Head Of Finance for Essential Music & Marketing.
“We try to labels provide a basis on which they can work,” or to put it simply: “To all the boring parts of the music business, the no manager, label or publisher wants, we take care of,” said Bush.
From six million to 600,000 lines
MRC aims to facilitate the registration of works and determine the use of music exactly. The company is based within the value chain directly behind the digital aggregators. Of them MRC receives the data, adjusted it and forwards it to labels, managers or publishers / collecting societies. “But the YouTube accounts comprise each month six million lines. We reduce this number to about 600,000,” said Bush.Most computer would not even open an Excel file with six million lines.
The second level of MRC is analytical, Bush continues. If the adjusted data are only available, could it be used for all possible intelligence value.
Extensive sales experience
MRC can work with any partners worldwide. “We understand how marketing works in different territories,” said Bush. On the sales side, a lot of problems with which many people could not handle would result. “If you receive an account statement, you do not make this into question. This assurance has you in on sales statements. Without the appropriate experience, can not the statements obtained in question,” said Bush. As a label is just in the digital Age no time to deal with it. At the same time am plain and fall business with the correct detection and rapid distribution of royalties.
The team of MRC include not only the former Bush Cooking Vinyl employee Tegan Sims (Head of royalties) and Sam Difford (Office Manager) and Gerri Geraghty (consultant). Together they have more than 50 years of experience in the industry, as it says in a statement of Cooking Vinyl Group. The label group is involved in MRC, their Managing Director Martin Goldschmidt, together with Mike Chadwick, Managing Director of Essential Music & Marketing, and Director of MRC.
MRC focuses on Counterpoint
Even the largest distributors could make mistakes in the creation of metadata. Counterpoint, the software work with the MRC, same data automatically. You know, for example, automatically check for a certain territory existed at all the necessary licensing deals for the use of certain titles.
Another important point is the cost factor. On the distribution of royalties, a label should, for example, note how many running costs have to cover it and deduct it from the outgoing payments. MRC care not only about the incoming, but also outgoing amounts.