Flutin Puts Emerging Artists Where They Need to Be: In Music Fans’ Playlists

App boosts indie musicians via AI-powered playlists and engaging UX

Austin-based Christophe Lavigne had been working on his music for years, leading the rock band Arrows to Fire. Like a lot of indie artists, he’d done all he could, but the results were disheartening. An album’s worth of tracks on Spotify would garner less than 50 listeners.

Lavigne discovered Flutin, an app that tunes into users’ locations and habits, and things shifted. As his songs popped up in hundreds of thousands of users’ custom playlists, he got stream after stream, racking up half a million plays in just 10 days.

“Christophe had spent money on ads and boosts on social media, but was really struggling to find the right channel,” says Flutin CEO Vishu Gupta. “He was dealing with what lots of emerging musicians face in the market without a network. They struggle to find a relevant mass audience and build a financially viable career. On the other side, listeners who would love their music only search for what they have already heard. This is where we come in.”

Flutin uses AI to serve both musicians who want to reach new audiences and potential fans who want to find new music they didn’t know existed. Its mix of features and customization has sparked 9.7 mil downloads and keeps 370K daily users streaming an average of 3 mil tracks a day. The India-based app’s stunning rise in its home market has changed the careers and lives of dozens of independent Indian artists, in a scene overwhelmingly dominated by Bollywood heavyweights.

RII (Rina Charaniya) was able to build such a following via Flutin, racking up 3.5 mil streams. She caught the eye of T-Series (the Indian label and YouTube channel that has conquered the world). “Flutin promises just the right amount of exposure and a strong fan-base,” Charaniya says, “exactly what a budding artist needs."

RII’s story is music to Gupta’s ears. He knows firsthand the trials of indie music life, as a vocalist in a band when he was in college. “It was so hard to get gigs or sell music,” he recalls. “I really felt the lack of a platform that promoted emerging musicians and that didn’t require users to search for specific tracks they didn’t know existed.”

Flutin’s savvy use of data and ingenious approach to user experience ensures artists connect more often with fans. The app draws on geolocation, demographics, mood, user song preferences, and activity, to build highly personalized playlists with tracks from both well-known and new artists. For example, it will custom create a playlist for your daily morning run in your favorite park, with no ads and no subscription.

“We're tracking several key data points across our platform. Our AI takes information on the 'what', 'when', and 'where' factors from our users’ listening habits, including their interactions. We also supplement this data with the mood or feeling our users provide. The end result is a unique playlist for every unique individual,” explains Gupta. “If you’re listening to hip hop, we’ll insert artists similar to the hip hop artists you already listen to in your feed. Since the user has already been listening to similar music, the discovery unfolds really organically. They go ahead and listen to more music from this new artist, then often move to the artist’s profile to learn more.” Lavigne’s tracks, for example, popped up beside similar sounding and feeling rock favorites, and new fans were forged.

Flutin then provides easy ways in app for musicians to convert interest into revenue, taking a very modest share of the transaction. “Users find out about their new favorite artists’ concerts, buy tickets, and buy their merch,” Gupta notes. “Listeners get more relevant artists to enjoy, and emerging musicians’ careers start to change.”

Flutin is expanding in the U.S. and is rolling out new tools to help artists based on its geo-location and other AI-powered insights. For musicians like Lavigne eager to jumpstart their fan engagement, its power is clear. “I found real fans in places I never expected, people I never would have been able to reach otherwise,” Lavigne reflects.

Cultivating Wild Data: How Entertainment Intelligence Is Bringing Meaningful Analytics to the Streaming-Age Music Business

It’s fun to talk about data, its ubiquity and importance. It’s not so fun to make sense of a billion lines of data from multiple service providers for an entire label roster.

That is unless you’re Greg Delaney, the founder and driving force behind data analytics platform Entertainment Intelligence (Ei). The service has been quietly helping independent labels and distributors work with data like the majors do, analyzing playlist performance, setting meaningful benchmarks, and tracking spikes that pop out of deep catalog. Clients include Domino, Secretly Distribution, Sub Pop, Epitaph, Naxos, Concord Music Group and Zebralution, among others.

“If the indies all get together, you can have the tools that rival, if not surpass, what the majors can do,” Delaney states. “It’s hard for a big company to pivot quickly, but smaller labels can, with our support”

After founding Crowdsurge, a global fan-club ticketing company that worked directly with artists like Paul McCartney and Foo Fighters, Delaney wanted to address a different “data mess” he saw in the music industry. He teamed up with label and publishing veterans to home in on the metrics that matter, broadening data’s role from short-term blip-like guide in promo campaigns or blunt A&R instrument, to a finely honed strategic tool in the long game of artists career development.

“There are many DSP dashboards out there,” explains Delaney, “and just as many services offering to unite them into a dashboard to rule them all. Most are scraping limited public data and then offering vanity metrics that aren’t very helpful at guiding business decisions. We discovered labels need nuance and actionable benchmarks that only listener-level streaming data can provide.”

Ei gets permission from clients to directly access their data from digital service providers (DSPs like Spotify, Apple, Pandora, and Deezer). It then anonymizes and aggregates this across clients to generate high-quality insights about playlist performance, source of streams, and listening behavior. It pings catalog owners when it detects a “heartbeat,” such as an older track picking up steam. It allows for music professionals, managers, and artists to do something retailers have done for years but the music industry hasn’t: detailed cohort analysis. Ei also gives important context to data and reports, giving a per-capita option for territory statistics, for example, revealing when a market is punching above its weight.

Together, this renders a richer portrait of just how listeners around the world are interacting with music, a view that goes way beyond raw follower counts or skip rates. For example, if a label sees an uptick in streams around the announcement of a GRAMMY nomination, they can determine how many are new listeners, how these listeners interacted with tracks (Did they move on quickly? Did they add it to a personal playlist?), and where they came from. If a touring band needs to know which mid-sized city to pick in a region (Buffalo or Rochester?), Ei can help figure out where a more likely audience lives, right down to the neighborhood. If a label is considering which playlist to pitch a new single to, Ei can give insights into how many total streams are likely to result from a placement, based on the average track streams per day multiplied by the average “lifetime” of other tracks on that playlist.

“Most people don’t unfollow a playlist, which means followers are not a useful metric,” Delaney notes. “We wanted to find something useful, so we took data from a wide range of genres and around 350,000 artists and four million tracks with worldwide audiences. We used it to create our own benchmarks, something only really big volume folks like the majors can usually do.”

This data analysis yields fascinating and actionable results. A large indie label noticed something strange happening in several East Asian markets with a particular song. Listeners in Japan and Korea all seemed to be skipping at the exact same spot. Meanwhile in Central Europe, listeners kept streaming away. The label found that right at the skip spot, a harsher guitar part broke into what was an otherwise chill song. This observation inspired a remix that changed that transition, tailored to those markets.

This kind of data-driven approach is particularly suited for the way indie labels work, to the longer-term investment in artists and repertoire they make. To really see what works, they need to cultivate the wild data pouring out of DSPs.

“Wild data is out there, and it can run free and evolve,” reflects Delaney. “In walled gardens, the data will never evolve, and we’ll never get better guidance. We need to let the data out of all the proprietary silos and private databases, let it cross-pollinate and evolve. By working together we can give everyone in this industry the power to make data-informed decisions.

Art+Logic Harnesses Technical Excellence and Design Elegance to Tackle Software and Hardware “Impossibles”

Art+Logic has been cultivating the creativity and skill required to navigate challenging software and hardware development projects for nearly 30 years. An all-remote team of North America-based developers and designers, the firm has worked with many household names, including Apple, Google, Trader Joe’s, and NASA, and with highly specialized companies doing everything from monitoring pipeline safety to assessing health risks.

Depending on whom you talk with at Art+Logic, the team might be working to use neural networks and machine learning to tag the mood of particular musical instruments, or they may be tackling a thorny testing issue that uses IoT to do away with destructive or manual testing on infrastructure. They have developed apps with clients that empower physically challenged theater lovers to see more plays, and they contribute major tools and insights to audio technology standards that guide entire industries.

Art+Logic tackles these challenges by zigging where many other development companies have zagged. While others have specialized and narrowed their skill sets, Art+Logic remains committed to a language-agnostic approach that doesn’t limit itself to specific industries or device types. Instead, it focuses on coding the “impossible,” the projects and ideas others may shy away from.

Client needs and challenges come first, a perspective demanding great flexibility and curiosity. "We have learned that to serve our clients best, we need to apply the same flexible problem-solving approach we use in development to our relationships,” explains Paul Hershenson, Art+Logic’s Co-Founder. “We treat each client engagement as a unique puzzle to solve. We often act as consultants to early-stage entrepreneurs helping prepare them for a successful development effort, and then develop MVPs that can be smoothly handed off to in-house teams for ongoing development. In some cases, we act as long-term development partners on large, multiyear efforts. It’s never one size fits all. We respond to what our clients need.”

This ethos inspires intriguing projects within the company, designed to make the most of its broad skills and open mindset, such as its Innovation Network of specialist consultants (when you need a lean interface or better signal processing) and its Incubator Lab, which gives tens of thousands of dollars in development and design services to winning ideas.

The blend of nimble technical imagination, artful design, and thoughtful business relationships have made Art+Logic a secret weapon for dozens of high-profile and industry-leading companies. “It's a challenge to talk about our successes when we do so much work that requires our participation to be kept under wraps,” explains Art+Logic’s president Bob Bajoras. “Fortunately, when we sit down with a lead and develop that relationship into a project, our talented designers and developers are very effective at demonstrating our unique combination of skills, passion, and insistence on ‘doing the hard stuff.' We're a quirky bunch, and sometimes that's what a tough project needs. Designers and developers like ours are a rare breed.”

CD Baby Expands its Creator Services Team with Global Head of Promotions Addition

CD Baby continues its significant focus on and investment in the development of artists’ careers with the further growth of its Creator Services team, which empowers artists to maintain their independence, ownership rights and creative control with support and resources similar to a large record label.

The latest hire of Los Angeles-based Geoff Halliday brings creative project development skills and existing editorial relationships to lead release marketing for the rapidly expanding international team focused on providing artist/label services to its exclusive artist roster. Halliday joins the CD Baby Creator Services team as head of promotions and will oversee the company’s artist marketing globally. Halliday was previously Director of Digital Marketing at Red Light Management where he oversaw marketing and promotions for artists including Marshmello, ODESZA, Rhye, Bob Moses and Bassnectar, among others.

“Having spent years as an advocate for independent music and having worked across DSP relations in a variety of roles, I am extremely enthusiastic and eager to join CD Baby's growing Creator Services team,” Halliday says. “I am truly delighted to be a part of enriching the experience for both new and existing members of the CD Baby roster.”

CD Baby, previously known as the starting point for artists, launched its Creator Services team in 2018 to formalize and deepen its commitment to serving artists at all points in their career as an alternative to the traditional label system. CD Baby Creator Services has swiftly grown from three to 12 people covering A&R, Account Management, and Promotions, with team members located around the world, including the UK, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, and Colombia. The team works with diverse artists across genres, such as global star Aloe Blacc, rising Latin phenomenon El Alfa, Danish singer-songwriter Oh Land, Disney actors Jayden Bartels and Max & Harvey as well as many prominent performers. 

CD Baby Creator Services has landed its artists on countless streaming service playlist covers, as well as facilitated many unique opportunities involving studio sessions, outdoor advertising campaigns, and new product launches. CD Baby is a preferred partner at the major digital services, and Halliday and the team will continue to build on this reputation to maximize value for artists.

“The CD Baby Creator Services team was born out of the need to serve and - most importantly - add value to our biggest clients and be a home for established artists across the industry and globe,” explains Jon Bahr, VP of Creator Services. “CD Baby has become a true player in the Artist/Label Services space and Geoff’s addition to the team is a huge boost for continued success for our artists’ campaigns with our streaming service partners.

About Geoff Halliday

Geoff Halliday has been in and around the music industry for the better part of 15 years. Most recently, Halliday was Red Light Management’s Director of Digital Marketing working with artists including Marshmello, ODESZA, Rhye, Bob Moses and Bassnectar, among others. Halliday started his career at WPRB Princeton Radio before relocating to Los Angeles to work in the music distribution space at BFM Digital (eventually acquired by The Orchard). In 2011, Halliday took on a new challenge as his music project Hands was signed to the Kill Rock Stars label and toured nonstop for the following years. This on-the-ground experience helped develop and sharpen his skills in digital marketing and content strategy during a time when social media and streaming were becoming more relevant by the second. In 2015, Halliday reentered the digital distribution world as DashGo’s music service Promotions Manager before joining Red Light Management. Halliday’s diverse experience and knowledge base provides the foundation for his refreshing take on the digital music landscape.

About CD Baby

CD Baby is one of the largest distributors and rights administrators of independent music on the planet, home to almost 750,000 artists and more than 9 million tracks, getting independent music to more than 150 digital services and platforms around the globe and allowing artists to monetize their presence on YouTube. Artists using the CD Baby platform have earned more than $730 million since its founding. Its Publishing Administration service allows over 200,000 songwriters/artists to collect all of their publishing royalties. CD Baby has become the go-to partner for many icons in the new music industry.

Play MPE Expands its Team to Bring Innovation to Content Distribution and Promotion

Play MPE is proud to announce the expansion of its tech team, including Sergei Berenson, the company’s new Director of Engineering.

“We are committed to super-serving our customers. Having a strong tech foundation is essential to achieving that,” explains Play MPE CEO Fred Vandenberg. “We’re recruiting creative and bright technological talents to continue to push our products to the next level.”

In an industry where technology and user experience are critical ,“We want to make content discovery and curation workflow feel effortless,” Vandenberg notes. 

The expanded tech team also includes three developers with extensive software development and testing experience, software developer Nasrin Shirali, frontend developer Rimika Datta, and Ashutosh Pandey, backend developer who brings machine learning expertise to the team. They will be led by Berenson, whose experience in leading development teams at technology companies like Autodesk, POF and Koho, a successful Fintech company based in Toronto, will further support the company’s growth. 

“My ability to strategize a technological vision and implement complex solutions to advanced products will move the company towards its growth plans,” says Berenson. “I am looking forward to delivering quality products that set Play MPE apart from their competitors and establishes the company as the leading music collaboration platform.”

Spin the Wheel: Tracklib Teams Up with Mass Appeal, Brings Rhythm Roulette to All

Tracklib dares you to spin the wheel and play your own round of Rhythm Roulette, the fun challenge video series from Mass Appeal. And as a special nod to Tracklib, legendary East Coast hip-hop producer Rockwilder flipped a track from the online sampling library on the latest installment of the popular YouTube series.

Mass Appeal’s Rhythm Roulette gets top producers to make a beat sampling three records picked at random (where the roulette part comes in). Over the past four years, the YouTube series has showcased producers’ technique and artistry, shining a light on what makes a producer great in a world that often favors emcees. Over a hundred producers--including Large Professor, Just Blaze, Erick Sermon, and DJ Jazzy Jeff, to name a few--have taken on the challenge so far.

The resulting videos are riveting and wildly popular, and now Tracklib wants to get its producer community to do more than watch. It has teamed up with Mass Appeal to give all producers the chance to play Rhythm Roulette, by building out a special themed feature on the Tracklib site. “We created a wheel that’s a nod to the one on Rhythm Roulette. It gives you three random tracks from our catalog to play with,” explains Tracklib’s Per Stenius. “You sample the track and make your beat.” 

Beatmakers can spin the wheel once a day, run with the results, and submit their favorite beats to Tracklib, as part of a month-long contest. Rockwilder will personally pick the winner. The first prize is a trip to New York (from anywhere in the world), for a private studio session with Rockwilder at Def Squad Studios.

The contest reflects Tracklib’s mission to empower emerging producers, as well as support big names, as they create fully licensed tracks under reasonable, affordable terms. Recent and soon-to-be-released tracks from Young M.A, Charlie Heat, Vic Mensa, BROCKHAMPTON, and Mary J. Blige all featured Tracklib-licensed samples. For as little as $50, producers can license most tracks on Tracklib without the delays, negotiations, or onerous legal complications that plagued samples in the past.

"You can go to Tracklib, test out three greatest joints, and see what is up,” Rockwilder says.

Isaac Hayes’s unreleased masters now available on Tracklib

On Wednesday night at the A3C Conference in Atlanta, Tracklib will announce a deal with the estate of soul legend Isaac Hayes to offer a select group of 20 unreleased songs on the site’s catalog. These tracks have never been released publicly, and, thus, represent a landmark catalog acquisition for Tracklib and a new way of mining the vaults for the Isaac Hayes estate. Now producers and artists can access this goldmine of previously unheard material, sample from it, and make new music.

Isaac Hayes III, son of the legend and manager of his estate, said that his father was “with it” when it came to sampling, which explains why he is one of the most sampled artists ever. Before his death, Hayes befriended key producers, including the RZA from the Wu-Tang Clan. Samples of Hayes’s material have always been part of soul and hip hop’s backbone, including recent hits like Alessia Cara’s “Here,” Kanye West’s “30 Hours,” and “6 Inch” by Beyonce.

The chance for aspiring producers to have access to this material, and to clear the samples easily and legally on the Tracklib platform itself, makes this a rare opportunity for hip hop heads to go back to their roots. Hayes III longs to see his father’s legacy grow beyond repackaging or re-releases of material that is already, deservedly, classic. The songs being released are all multi-tracked, meaning there is a lot of material to play with here.

Tracklib and Isaac Hayess III have previewed the material for a number of key producers in the sampling world, and the response has been excitement verging on chomping at the bit to get their hands on this material. Erick Sermon, Prince Paul, Drumma Boy, Jazee Pha, and Organized Noise have all heard the tracks and are anxiously anticipating getting to work with them.

Tracklib’s success within the hip-hop and producer communities made it a natural new home for these unreleased tracks, as they have had a recent string of high-profile releases made with samples from the Tracklib catalog, including DJ Khaled, Mary J. Blige, and Brockhampton. Hayes III admitted Tracklib was on his radar for a long time, but their recent success with J. Cole’s “Middle Child” was the one that grabbed his attention and helped to seal the deal.

Hayes III concluded that he is “really excited for today’s producers all around the world to get their hands on these unreleased Isaac Hayes samples and continue his musical legacy, to create new records, new sounds, new ideas.” With this deal with Tracklib, that goal is within reach, and aspiring producers and fans of hip hop and soul will be all the better for it.

About Tracklib:

Tracklib is the world’s first and only music service that offers legal and affordable samples at scale. Music producers can easily browse more than 100,000 tracks and purchase downloads for sampling, then instantly get a license with an easy-to-use category and and sample length calculation. Tracklib samples have been in hits by J. Cole, DJ Khaled,  and many others.
www.tracklib.com

The Ballad of “LoFi Rod”: How DashGo Became the Go-To Label Services Provider for a Young, Dynamic Genre

Behind some of the most popular LoFi playlists on the major streaming services is an unexpected figure, a music industry veteran in his golden years who just happens to adore the style’s blissful, beat-inflected sound. Dubbed “LoFi Rod,” Rod Linnum worked for decades at UMG before joining independent label services company DashGo.

The shift to digital distribution and data has led many to focus on the science and to forget the art of getting music to the right listeners. But music is not a widget that can be pushed indiscriminately from one place to another. It’s the product of people in scenes, trying to reach other people.

Rod knows this well, from years spent carefully building relationships with artists, labels, and other key industry figures. “I got into the rising tide of this music,” reflects Rod. “It was a scene filled with creative energy, but it was still pretty disorganized and scattered.” Rod and DashGo have worked to change that and bring artists more business and visibility. 

The unlikely champion of this youthful genre--many artists are barely out of their teens--came by his love of the music honestly. After leaving Universal, he took an extended trip to Europe and fell for chill out, the mellow electronic style wafting through the cafes and bars of the continent at the time. Rod loved the music so much, he founded his own label to put out his favorite artists. 

As chill out faded, Rod heard a similar vibe in LoFi. “I started hearing chill out music but with hip hop beats and all the clicks and pops and scratches that I loved in chill out. I really like it because it combines all those elements. It’s electronic and the beats are very contemporary, but it has these wonderful vintage jazz vibes. When I heard it, I made my own playlist.” 

Things took off from there. Now, Rod curates popular playlists on Apple Music, Spotify, and Audiomack. The Apple Music playlists have grown rapidly, and one generates over 2MM plays per month and is the only third-party playlist featured in Apple Music's "Chill Room" section. When DashGo noticed the momentum on its LoFi playlists, it began reaching out to and signing a few indie labels and artists. The pace has since increased: DashGo has  signed 5 LoFi labels in the last 3 months. It now represents a significant portion of the increasingly successful genre.

“We saw the success and the energy, and thanks to Rod, we knew it was not a very organized genre but had lots of really talented Artists,” say DashGo President Ben Patterson. “We believe we can add value for these Artists. Our mantra is to add value for clients, who need to be treated with respect and be promoted accurately and authentically to the different platforms and services. We’ve figured out a way to do this for a wide range of genres, by building expertise and then relationships from the grassroots up.” The tale of LoFi Rod shows that though music technology has shifted much, the business at its best remains one of creative ties and committed champions.

Rod now is building on the LoFi relationships he’s forged in new ways, working to make connections around the genre. He’s started bringing artists together for collaborations who are perfect complements, but may not be aware of one another’s work yet. “I’m really excited about finding individual unique artists and putting them together to collaborate,” Rod enthuses. “Most recently, I encouraged a young Portuguese artist, UKDD and Brazilian LoFi veteran, Ray Ben Rue, to do a track together, and the resulting collaboration was immediately added to numerous curated playlists. I love being that catalyst, putting two artists that work well together on one track. It’s rewarding that artists who are successful at other labels want to join us. We take a lot of pride in that.” 
 
About DashGo

Part of the AVL family of companies, DashGo is a white glove distributor that works to maximize the value of music catalogs in partnership with select clients, reaching over 600 worldwide digital storefronts and developing strategic plans for marketing, PR, and partnerships. The company’s full-featured API has become a go-to distribution tool for labels and music platforms around the world, with clients from Taiwan to Brazil. Currently working with a catalog of more than 500,000 songs, it has developed direct relationships and integration with download, streaming, and radio services, and collects directly from SoundExchange.

Blake McGrath - Breakthrough

US Recording artist Blake McGrath releases new Christian pop album ‘INNERvention’. Blake McGrath's career started as a professional dancer having appeared on TV-Shows like So You Think You Can Dance and MTV’s Dancelife. Since then he has released several successful albums and EPs with Spotify and YouTube with over 10 million play and still rising. Check out his IG profile as well and his music on Spotify and Apple Music.

Check it out on Apple Music.

Follow Blake on Instagram.

Major Music Streaming Services Comparison Chart [INFOGRAPHIC]

Via Consumers Advocate.

Enterprise-Strength Software for the Entertainment Business: Synchtank Brings Powerful Solutions to Large Companies Grappling with Metadata, Royalties, and Asset Management

Rights holders with large catalogs of entertainment assets face the daunting prospect of asset management, revenue maximization, and collecting fully on royalties, often measured in penny fractions. The scale is huge, the data messy, the payments complex. Rights users, on the other hand, face enormous compliance challenges when licensing content for use in production. Challenges that are further exacerbated by the ever-growing content landscape and the sheer volume of licenses required, pushing many major systems to breaking point.

Synchtank has spent the past decade creating cloud-based software to tackle the specific needs of entertainment companies, untangling the threads of metadata and money. Its customers are divided into supply-side cases (rights owners like record labels and music publishers) and demand-side cases (rights users such as studios, brands, broadcasters and networks). Whether the focus is sync pitching, royalty administration or compliance management, the platform supports the specialized workflows required in each case.

“Our customers are confronting the dilemma of build or buy,” says Synchtank CBO Chris Cass. “They may believe their problems or processes are unique, but they are often dealing with the same challenges as other companies in the entertainment space.” Synchtank finds these common bottlenecks and roadblocks, and has built a platform that eliminates them.

“As we work with clients, we help them see that the solutions they have been considering piecemeal--metadata matching, say--are already running on our platform,” explains Synchtank CEO Rory Bernard. “The flashy feature sets smaller startups offer are often just new names for old tech. We can do all that, and more. Synchtank offer comprehensive solutions with excellent reliability and security,” in an industry rife with vapourware.

Synchtank’s name speaks to its origins, though the company has morphed and grown considerably. When Joel Jordan founded the company, his main goal was maximizing his labels’ recording and publishing revenue by getting his catalog up online in an attractive format and finding efficient ways to reach music supervisors and showrunners. He decided to build his own way, and Synchtank was born.

The company has evolved rapidly in the decade that followed, expanding its solutions from sync into other key entertainment business processes. “When you work with huge catalogs, lots of issues come into play,” notes Bernard. “Most of your task as a software provider to a large entertainment company is to assure them that your service is reliable, your customer support is excellent, and that you have appropriate security protocols. These aspects are essential.”

As Synchtank turned from slick catalog presentation to a full-blown SaaS company, it attracted a notable customer base that helped define what the company developed next. “We sit down with a client and do a lot of diligence,” Cass says. “We’ll see what we can already provide, what is in the lab that we could accelerate. We see what we can build that can be used elsewhere.”

Today, Synchtank is used primarily for IP and metadata management integrated with rights clearance, royalty, and financial systems, by some of the biggest media companies in the world, including British Telecom TV and Sport, CD Baby, ClicknClear, peermusic, Sony, Unilever, Universal, Vice Media, WarnerMedia and Warner Music Group. Through its work with both rights owners and rights users, Synchtank is creating efficiencies for the entire music and entertainment ecosystem, helping all parties work together more cohesively.