The music trade faces a bevy of challenges in 2025 – as we’ll cowl exhaustively within the pages of Digital Music Information – however guaranteeing correct and well timed funds to rights house owners shouldn’t be one in every of them. In partnership with Tipalti, we’ve created a information to deal with this concern: introducing our playbook on Pay Folks Within the Music Trade.
The worldwide music trade is now projected to exceed $100 billion in annual income, although cost buildings and splits have gotten much more difficult. You may’t wing it anymore: the complexity of accounts payable within the music trade necessitates sturdy monetary platforms and partnerships to ensure immediate and exact funds.
To deal with this crucial music trade want, Digital Music Information and Tipalti have collaborated to supply a complete playbook for streamlining funds within the music trade. This information presents options for cost challenges confronted by music companies of all sizes, from startups to giant enterprises. We hope it presents some crucial tricks to firms in any trade sub-category, in addition to entrepreneurs, buyers, and music platforms of all varieties.
The playbook is obtainable right here – and it’s an awesome information for plotting out your total accounts payable stack or just upgrading your present one.
This was fairly enjoyable to construct, and likewise supplied some optimistic takeaways.
The excellent news? We rapidly realized that there are a selection of firms who’re already killing it on this sphere, pumping out thousands and thousands of funds typically inside 30 days of a utilization, license, or different triggering occasion. The reason being that music accounts payable (or AP) is now a manageable artwork, and now not a hindrance to an organization’s success on this house.
The out there instruments and infrastructure are superior and will be applied swiftly and effectively. That was our greatest and most hopeful lesson discovered whereas creating this playbook.
Tipalti additionally noticed that the music trade is quickly establishing aggressive benchmarks for funds. Certainly, AP trade requirements are rapidly turning into established.
These benchmarks embrace capturing, accounting for, and paying rights house owners for each play on any platform, in any territory, inside 30 days. Cost infrastructure should additionally accommodate varied cost strategies and mechanically deal with tax obligations throughout completely different areas (whether or not states, provinces, or international locations).
Moreover, seamless integration with present cloud ERP software program is essential for managing giant volumes of payees and shoppers with out extreme handbook labor.
One thing else Tipalti taught us throughout this course of: you need to all the time have the ability to definitively reply the query, “Who’re we paying, precisely?”
A key step is to determine precisely who you have to pay, the place and when you have to pay them — and naturally, how a lot they need to obtain. Then you possibly can consider your present accounting and cost infrastructure in opposition to trade requirements.
Anyway: the playbook kicks off with various checklists to evaluate your AP stack, with options on methods to fill the gaps.
We hope you’ll try the playbook – and hope it helps!