On this episode, Tristra talks with Dae Bogan, the MLC's head of third-party partnerships. In a wide ranging conversation, they explore how focus has moved from seeking out new technological breakthroughs towards integrating existing innovations like AI, blockchain, and cryptocurrency. The landscape of music publishing is no longer the sleepy niche it once was; it's a vibrant ecosystem, thanks to legislative steps like the Music Modernization Act and the pivotal role of the MLC in fostering transparency and collaboration.
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Episode Transcript
Machine transcribed
0:00:11 - Dmitri
Welcome back to Music Tectonics, where we go beneath the surface of music and tech. I'm your host, Dmitri Vietze. I'm also the founder and CEO of Rock Paper Scissors, the PR and marketing firm that specializes in music tech and innovation. Wherever you sit in the music ecosystem, you've probably sensed that we're in a different phase of how technology is solving problems in the music industry. On this episode, my co-host, Tristra New Year Yeager, talks with Dae Bogan, the MLC's head of third-party partnerships, about this shift. Whereas before, many of us sought out the next transformative technology that would grow the industry or increase fan engagement and monetization of music, in this conversation, Dae argues that we're in a settling process to truly integrate many of the great ideas that have already emerged in music and how interoperability is becoming a key factor in the success of adoption of new technologies in music. Plus, tristra asked Dae what the next big opportunity is for the music biz, as Dae gives us a 10,000-foot view of technology and royalties across the planet. Over to you, tristra.
0:01:22 - Tristra
Hi Dae, Thanks so much for joining us today on Music Tectonics.
0:01:26 - Dae
Thanks for having me. As always, I love working with you guys.
0:01:30 - Tristra
Oh, it's always a pleasure to talk to you too, and I love sometimes the big picture viewpoint you bring to these issues that can feel very much in the weeds. So speaking of big picture, let's talk about it. The Royalty Administration, data rights, all those that whole landscape has changed really dramatically in the last five years or so and you've been watching it happen. I'm wondering what big shifts do you see underway and how is the industry embracing them?
0:01:59 - Dae
All right, Strikes them deep in.
0:02:01 - Tristra
Yeah there we go, jumping right in. I said deepen, yeah, there we go Jumping right in.
0:02:03 - Dae
Well, before we jump into that, I kind of want to kind of revisit 2018 and why that's important. In 2018, I put together a presentation called Music 2020, the next era of innovation in the music industry, where I was basically giving my predictions on where the music industry would be going in the 20s and this decade. And I took this kind of presentation on tour, spoke at a number of universities on the West Coast, actually presented the same presentation, just tweaked a little bit, with Steve Cohen, who at the time, was a chief innovation officer at Warner at Music Biz 2019, right for the pandemic. At Warner at Music Biz 2019, right for the pandemic. So during my presentation, I basically gave my predictions, based off of 10 years of being in the music sort of startup space, and I identified technologies that were, at the time, a number of sandbox ideas, some startups with some early funding, seed funding, that were working on products or solutions for the music industry, and I identified artificial, artificial intelligence, machine learning, cryptocurrency, tokenization and blockchain as the five technologies and you know, you know, at all the conferences from 2013 to 2019 was all about that stuff and, of course, metadata. So I said, look going into 2020, this is what I, this is my you know predictions. Then, obviously, 2020 came and you know the pandemic set upon us, but everything I predicted still happens. Just shifted year to 2021, where nfts blew up and, uh, you know more. Um, web 3, virtual reality stuff was really kicking off. Vicky nalman, you know, at the forefront of of helping startups in that space kind of figure out the, the rights implications and connecting the dots between creators and producers. Um, so these were predictions I made in 2018 off of my work in terms of where the industry, what was bubbling in the industry from a technology standpoint. Now we are six years later from that 2018 predictions and things have started to settle in terms of what technologies made it. A lot of people raised money, but they didn't really build traction. There were blockchain solutions, there were various type of tokenizations, cryptocurrency-backed streaming services like AudioU, which I mentioned, actually, in my presentation in 2018, which was just in its infancy. So I've kind of done this before and sort of made some predictions, but I don't have any predictions now, and that's the thing.
I just had a conversation with somebody. I said well, what do you think is going to happen in the next five years? Honestly, I don to happen in the next five years. Like, honestly, I don't know if the next five years is really as much about technology, the way it was the last five years, and more about the ecosystem. The ecosystem is shifting again. What has happened in those five years since I talk about technology? The MMA passed, the Music Modernization Act passed, the MLC was formed, the DLC was formed the not going to be about technology. The next five years is going to be about honing in on the business, making sure that these technologies are integrated and not isolated. So I don't think it's about what's the next big shift in the platforms. It's really what is the next big shift in the industry and it's about how are we going to adopt these technologies that made it through that five-year, that six. Well, I say five-year because the first, you know 2020 was the pandemic, beginning of the pandemic, so you get one little gap year. So I've already made the what I thought would happen.
And we have AI now and I mentioned AI in 2018. Yeah, it was already happening in labs and different places and startups and different um accelerators, but no one was investing heavily in the music industry. It was AI. And search it was AI and really creative robotic things at Google and whatever. Um, oracle was doing some stuff, but now we have this explosion of AI creation. Um and uh, you know content is coming out of it. Some good, some crap, but content is coming out of it.
0:06:54 - Tristra
Yeah.
0:06:55 - Dae
And we have accepted that this is going to be the way that creators create going forward. And we have learned from the 1990s, late 90s, early 2000s that we can't sue it into non-existence but rather legislate it into adoption. And that's where the next five years are going to be, and I think it's going to be seeing, not only the US but globally, how territories integrate these technologies, how we learned from the turn of the 21st century, how do we learn from that and how we're going to do it better now. So I think we're at the cusp of that as the MLC, because we are a society born in that frame, that timeframe of the projections that I made. You know, I didn't even know to be at the MLC when I made those projections.
0:07:43 - Tristra
That's really cool. Thank you so much for really broadening out our focus. Talk about some of these. You know what you're seeing in terms of things settling and an ecosystem evolving. That is more you know. That is less about disruption or revolution. Or you know big technological shifts and more about, you know, getting the guardrails in place, getting the systems in place. Where's the place where you see that happening most dynamically? Is there a part of the industry you see really move? Like you know, publishing, for instance, is changing really fast and you know, for decades it was seen as kind of like a little bit of a sleepy, a sleepy cow town of a niche of the industry. What are your thoughts?
0:08:26 - Dae
Yeah, I mean, I'd certainly think publishing was sleepy, you know, nine years ago, 10 years ago. You know, nine years ago, 10 years ago, I was working on Tune Registry. I can't believe it's been 10 years and that's because the industry was sleepy at the time. There was lots of problems that affected me as a small publisher and a small manager of songwriters at the time, but since then there has been an explosion of technological advancement and development in the music publishing and rights administration space. I'm in a great you know kind of vantage point in my role at MLC, the head of third party partnerships because I interface with and engage with companies that are technology, companies that are building solutions and resources for publishers, for rights administrators, for rights holders, small rights holders, big rights holders. That wasn't there 10 years ago when I was running around trying to promote Tune Registry. There was a couple of us that were building technology in the music publishing space. A number of them are still existing and doing well. Open Play shout out to Open Play. Shout out to Song Space, shout out to a lot of these guys who were around at the time when I was doing what I was doing 10 years ago. So, but there's more players in the game now and there's more competitors, which means it creates more innovation and opportunity for rights holders to shop around not feel like I have to use this company that's been around for 20 years because they're the only one right. You now have options. Record labels have had options for years. They also have had the resources to hire internally to build.
You know, publishing suffered from having resource limitations to be able to hire internally to build out. I remember when I was building my first applications in 2003,. There were Microsoft Access applications, and this is now 21 years later access applications, and this is now 21 years later. So you know the technical innovation and the rights administration space is happening. Ai is being used, machine learning is being used. Big data processing is being used. Interoperability which are terms we talked about in 2017, interoperability, which are terms we talked about in 2017, 2016, is actually being implemented. It's just no longer being driven by a consortium or a particular organization, but rather by coming together in the collaboration between private companies. So there are still limitations on that, of course, but thanks to things like DDEX that's providing the languages and the tools and the choreography to talk to each other, entrepreneurs are investing in those type of relationships, even though they might be competitors or near competitors. They understand now that we have to think holistically as an industry if we're going to really be able to solve problems as an industry, if we're going to really be able to solve problems.
No one likes silos Publishers don't like silos especially but we've become a more siloed world even though we've become more innovative. And I actually wrote a piece about this many years ago saying kind of looking at the timeline of when ASCAP was created in 1914, the BMI in 1931, and the CSEC in 1934, and then on and on, then GMR and then Alltrack and Pro Music Rights, and now I just heard of one the other day, a PRO out of Puerto Rico that apparently has been around since the 1950s. So I'm like this is more and more fragmentation. Of course the MLC was introduced to the industry. This is more and more fragmentation.
These are more and more silos. So we have to be able to service rights holders in the best way they need to be serviced, which is to be able to be a little more interoperable, be a little bit more. You know, if they want to move their catalog to a different platform because there's features they need, they should be able to do that in a way that's not going to disrupt their business for two weeks or two months. So I think founders and entrepreneurs that think more holistically and not just the me, me, me approach is going to be more integrated into the ecosystem and a better partner to rights holders than someone who's just like we're the best. You're not going to ever leave us, so we're not going to think about being interoperable.
0:12:45 - Tristra
That's. That is such a great point. So you've been thinking a lot about how to build the ecosystem from the MLC's point of view, and the MLC has created a lot of tech tools for rights holders, songwriters, distributors. Can you give me like a quick tour of the tools and how you built them. Why you built them?
0:13:05 - Dae
Yes. So let's start with the Music Modernization Act. So, before the MLC was even designated, the individuals and organizations involved in drafting and negotiating the MMA made sure to put in there that there has to be certain tools made available to the music industry in the United States. From the onset, when MLC you know, when we began building MLC we had requirements to fulfill a matching tool, a public search, for you know the ability for anyone in the world to be able to search every song that has been registered with MLC and therefore licensable to DSPs in the United States. You know certain data metadata that was never really public before that became public, such as shares and mechanicals, which was, I'm sure, for some publishers exciting, for others not so much. But we built a suite of tools that hopefully empower rights holders to be able to administer their catalogs efficiently and quickly with MLC.
So let's start with we have a portal. We have a portal, a member portal that is full of tools that helps you basically administer your catalog with MLC, basically administer your catalog with MLC. We have a claiming tool. The claiming tool allows people to claim shares of songs that have been registered with MLC so that if you have a collaborator and they've gone ahead and registered their song. Then you can go later and claim your share, as opposed to having to re-register and create duplicates. So this is a process that hopefully reduces friction and also speeds up the process of getting paid. So the claiming tool allows that. Then we have the matching tool. Well before that we have our registration tool.
So the registration tool is kind of a straightforward work registration tool. We have that available in bulk and individual registrations. We also have a matching tool. The matching tool is a game changer for the music industry, for the music administration space. It allows any rights holder to go and search or basically dig for sound recordings that are associated to their musical works and to be able to submit matches to say hey, these are recordings associated with my works.
Here's the match and then that helps our team. Now we already have processes at play to handle these matches. We have matching happening all the time, but we want to make sure that everyone has visibility and ability to play their part, has X visibility and ability to play their part, right To be involved in the matching or to be involved in helping to administer their catalog. So that's what the matching tool is all about is giving you visibility into unmatched information that comes in from DSPs and then to potentially speed up the process of getting your songs matched and paid out. Speed up the process of getting your songs matched and paid out. We now have a tool that helps with over claims, which you know conflicts, which is super important.
0:16:23 - Tristra
I was going to ask what exactly are over claims for those of us who aren't familiar with them. So an over claim?
0:16:28 - Dae
let's say, you know, there's three of us writing on a song and we, all you know, say that we agree on on the splits, but we don't know what the splits are. And then we all go and register that we, you know, we kind of, you kind of know that there's 33, 33, 33. But let's say, you know, you think that there's 33, 33, 34, right, 33, 33, 34 makes 100. But what if we all go into thinking that we're the 34? So now there's three people registering 34 percent. Now we're over 100 percent. So that's over claim, right, and there's other scenarios where it could be much more um, over 100 percent um, so that you know that that something you want to get resolved so that everyone can get paid out um.
So that's a new tool that's in the system Outside of our portal. We have, like I said, the public search, which anyone can search, which is a tool, and we have our for technology companies. We have a bulk data access subscription that allows anyone to subscribe to a feed of the entire MLC catalog of works and there's a number of companies that are using that. And we have a public search API that also allows companies to build in a search functionality against our public search. So we have lots of tools, both internal facing for members and external facing for the music industry.
0:17:54 - Tristra
Very cool. So you also worked on a really important tool in terms of matching and claiming for independent distributors like the TuneCores and the DistroKids of the world. It's affectionately called DURP. Can you tell me a bit more about that project and sort of where it is now? I think you launched it a year ago, year and a half ago it launched.
0:18:18 - Dae
It is about this we're about to celebrate. I'm about to celebrate its two-year anniversary oh, happy birthday derp. Yeah, it was, it was um released into the world in september of 2022 um. So I launched september 2022 um and we launched with, I think, five or six launch partners. These are distributors who were part of sort of the alpha and beta testing. We're now at 90 distributors.
Wow, amazing, and I have a goal of getting to 100 by the end of the year and we started the year, I believe, around 70-something distributors. So we've been bringing them in, reeling them in, and we have distributors around the world. So it's not just the United States, we have distributors all over the world and we've been able to find, through our partnerships with these distributors, we've been able to pay out artists all over the world royalties, either directly to them or through their publishing administrator, which is amazing because when I joined MLC, one of the inquiries that I made was basically, how are we able to support distributors? Prior to joining MLC, I was in that time, supporting distributors as well as publishers and record labels, but I knew how we supported publishers. I didn't know how we supported distributors or if MLC could, and we found out.
You know, we were very limited on what type of interaction we could have with distributors, based on the music modernization app, so I still, you know, spent. It took two years, but I came up with the DERP and we built the DERP and I love the term DERP. I remember coming up with it. There was other options I had, but when I saw the acronym DERP, I was like, oh yeah, that's the one I want everyone to say that it's a funny name.
0:20:11 - Tristra
Well, yeah, it's kind of cute right.
0:20:13 - Dae
Yeah, so we've been able to. I mean, the idea is this the MLC was mandated to pay out royalties that are coming in to us from DSPs to find rights holders. The best we can to engage rights holders and give them tools to administer a catalog. But we would be remiss not to try to work with every sector of the music industry Because if we're going to do the job the best, we have to engage everyone. The MMA let the distributors out. That's just a fact. It's not political, it's not partisan, it's just a simple fact. If you search for the term music distributor in the entire MMA document, the PDF, you will not see a result. And that's because distributors do not have a specific trade association and therefore no one was in the room negotiating or thinking about them at the time of these negotiations, back and forth and arguments and stuff.
Record labels were very well represented. Publishers were very well represented. Songwriters were very well represented. You have champions like Sona NSAI, you have ASCOT, BMIC, but when it came to the independent sector, the perspective was mostly about independent labels, independent publishers. There was not much. There had not. There must have not been enough talk about independent distributors because at the end of the day they were left out of the MMA and ultimately that came down to a big oh no, because independent distributors represent around six to 7% of the global recorded music, which means that is DIY, self-releasing artists. Many of those artists, if not most of those artists, are not signed to a publisher. They're self-published songwriters, which means they are their own publishers and their main economic partner are music distributors. So they should have been in the room, they should have been a part of the conversation. Someone should have been thinking about them and making sure something was drafted into the MMA for them.
So since that did not happen, it actually created an opportunity for us in this case me in particular to literally dive into the MMA, to find anywhere in it that gave us the ability to create a solution to loop in distributors, and we found that right. We have found provisions in the MMA that allowed and substantiated me to do this work and ultimately it benefited us and it benefited independent artists and it benefited the music community as a whole, because we've now paid out tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars to DIY artists who have would not have been paid otherwise, because they simply didn't know we exist. They had no publisher. Some of these guys are not even affiliated with the society in their own territory. Like our very first paid, Ronan was not affiliated with this society in their own territory. Like our very first payee, Ronan was not affiliated with this society in Australia and we paid out tens of thousands of dollars to lots of artists like that around the world.
So that gap created an opportunity and we leaned into that and the derp is what came out of it, and that's the type of creative thinking and outside of the box thinking that we're doing with MLC to try to find solutions for where there are no real direction from the MMA itself. Now, of course, we have regulatory directions from the corporate office and we have input from the music community through the rulemaking proceedings and being able to see what are people thinking in the comments. But ultimately it comes down to the team, to the people at the MLC that are thinking outside the box every single day, who is going into the office and figuring out how can we create solutions, how can we improve processes, how can we pay a dollar faster and more efficiently. And that's what the dirt is a part of.
0:23:56 - Tristra
I love it and that's what the dirt is a part of. I love it. Is there another gap you see on the horizon that might be addressable in the near future or that the industry should get together and start talking about how to address? I mean, you know, independent artists are a huge one, and independent creators in general. What's the next area that you would love to see the industry you know tackle when it comes to challenges? It comes to challenges like royalty administration, payouts.
0:24:21 - Dae
So what I've since learned, since I've started traveling around the world and doing kind of grassroots outreach and partnerships, but not only grassroots outreach and partnerships. My background is sociology, before I got a master's in music industry. I have a bachelor's in sociology and I bring those two things together by looking at the sociocultural and sociopolitical factors at play in certain territories that contribute to, ultimately, why people are not getting paid In the United States and Europe and certain parts of Europe. We are much more advanced. Our problems are much more defined. Our problems are much more defined, our problems are much more visible.
When you go into other territories, especially developing nations or other underdeveloped nations, the problems are not as defined, the ecosystems are not as structured or mature. So the industry there are multiple industries, right, when we talk about the global music industry, we extract information economically, primarily FP for the recorded music industry and SISECS with a C for the publishing industry. But there are what I think there's 193 countries and only 116 of the countries have a society, which means there's a gap. That is, I don't know what the hell is going on in my head, but there's, you know, 70-something countries that don't have a society representing it, which means, if you're a creator in that territory, you're not. It's not possible to be plugged into the global publishing ecosystem because you don't have a society through which to be plugged in. And on the recording music side, it's, you know, it's. It's also a challenge, um. So that's a gap, right, you we have.
We have geographical gaps, we have underdeveloped um, and people can say, well, you know, there's no music coming out of those areas no, there is because if you go to any, if you go to any spa to get a massage, you're going to hear world music, you're going to hear ambient music, you're going to hear monk chants, you're going to hear all these things. And when I was in Southeast Asia, moving around Indonesia and Thailand, I heard music that will end up in a retail store or coffee shop in West Hollywood, an organic spa. Where did that music come from? Oh, this is a such and such chant from such and such right. So we have to be plugged in because the music is coming from everywhere, even in places where they don't have real infrastructure. There are universities with music programs that are going out around the world and helping to record tribes, helping to record indigenous people, helping to record these things. And what happens after it gets recorded? It gets distributed and when it happens, then it earns royalties. Well, how do they get paid If there's no territory, if there's no society representing that territory? Right From an MLC perspective, from my passion perspective, we're obligated, pursuant to the MMA, to pay everyone, because that's what it says.
It says we must pay all copyright owners, not United States copyright owners, not copyright owners in 116 countries in which there's a society, not copyright owners who speak English. It says we must pay all copyright owners where there are, where there's music streams in the United States. So you know, I have a number of different initiatives happening around the world playlist research in specific languages, in specific territories. To understand do we have unmatched royalties at the MLC for somebody who's in a barrio in Medellin? And we found out we do. Do we have unmatched royalties for Peruvian artists in Peru or Chile? We do. Do we have unmatched royalties for Afro beats artists in a favela in South Africa? We do. So is it our obligation to pay them? It is, because that's what the mma says. How do we do? That is the question. But to do the research and to understand the global market, that's.
0:28:10 - Tristra
That's the stuff I'm passionate about that is really exciting and I think that's such an important point to make that there are there are still huge, uh, legislative and structural, structural issues to be addressed in a lot of countries, especially I can think off the top of my head of Georgia, which just got a new society and is really committed to technological savvy and paying folks quickly, because sometimes you'll end up with a society that's based on a very different copyright regime from a previous sort of political, you know, iteration or something like that. But that is super interesting day. Thank you, that's an exciting note to end on and thanks so much for letting us see that the whole world needs to get paid.
0:28:55 - Dae
The whole world needs to get paid.
0:28:56 - Dmitri
Yes, exactly, thanks for listening to Music Tectonics. If you like what you hear, please subscribe on your favorite podcast app we have new episodes for you every week.
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The Music Tectonics podcast goes beneath the surface of the music industry to explore how technology is changing the way business gets done. Weekly episodes include interviews with music tech movers & shakers, deep dives into seismic shifts, and more.