Black box royalties are everywhere and nowhere. There's millions or billions waiting to be claimed. In the music industry's digital era, there's been greater interest in the payment accountability from all industry stakeholders and service providers. But black box royalties remain a polarizing subject. How many are there? Who manages them? Are they necessary in the digital streaming and payments era? Join Rahul Rumalla from Paperchain as he discusses the results of a recent music industry survey on how black box royalties are defined by those working in the industry, and what the industry thinks it means for the future of royalty collection and rights management.

1. Understanding Music
Industry’s Black Box Royalties

2. RAHUL RUMALLA
CTO & Co-Founder of Paperchain
Independent Solutions Consultant
Ex-Fellow at Open Music Initiative
M.A in Music Business Berklee College of Music
B.Sc in Computer Science

4. Our Research
● Surveyed music industry professionals
● Interviewed executives and industry leaders
● An academic thesis
● Data analysis & case studies

5. Is rights
owner
identification
a problem?
93%
think it's
urgent
97%
think it needs
to be solved

6. What is the underlying problem?

7. Survey results
95%
want a
centralized database

8. Creator challenges
Challenges Leading to
Creators
Lack of knowledge, lack of
transparency
Mistrust in the system
Recording
Publishing
Rights Orgs

9. Recording challenges
Challenges Leading to
Creators
Recording
Tracking usage, too much time,
numerous sources, software
Bad metadata, missed
reporting
Publishing
Rights Orgs

10. Publishing challenges
Challenges Leading to
Creators
Recording
Publishing
Works registrations, right owner
identification, global tracking &
collection, technology
Lack of metadata, need
for centralized rights
database
Rights Orgs

11. Rights Org challenges
Challenges Leading to
Creators
Recording
Publishing
Rights Orgs
Lack of standards usage, title
matching, lack of reporting
Unidentified rights owners
& unattributed royalties

12. Challenges
Challenges Leading to
Creators
Lack of knowledge, lack of
transparency
Mistrust in the system
Recording
Tracking usage, too much time,
numerous sources, software
Bad metadata, missed
reporting
Publishing
Works registrations, right owner
identification, global tracking &
collection, technology
Lack of metadata, need
for centralized rights
database
Rights Orgs
Lack of standards usage, title
matching, lack of reporting
Unidentified rights owners
& unattributed royalties

13. Black box royalties
Unallocated royalty funds that are held by
rights organizations, often due to
non-identification of the copyright owners.
If unclaimed ( for 3 years ), funds are
disbursed to the organizations’ local members
per their market share.

14. Black Box Categories
● Unidentified performers
● Unidentified master owners
● Unidentified publishers
● Unidentified writers
● Unidentified ownership shares
● Unnotified works
● Unmatched usage to ownership

15. Black boxes in the music supply chain (DSPs)
Unmatched
Recordings to
Compositions
Unidentified
performers, master
owners &
unmatched usage
Unidentified
publishers, writers
& writer shares

16. 74%
Probability of
recurrent
unidentified cases

17. Survey results
● 33% do not know where to check
if they are owed royalties
● 72% are unaware of the claim
processes to follow
● 58% has had a case of missing
royalties while 35% don’t even
know

18. Connecting the black boxes

19. Black box research collaboration

20. RAHUL RUMALLA
Email: rahul@paperchain.io
Twitter: @rahulrumalla
Website: https://www.rahulrumalla.com