Dae Bogan Celebrates 5 Years of Service at The Mechanical Licensing Collective
It has been an honor to work with a passionate group of professionals to do the seemingly impossible in such a short period of time. In just 5 years, we’ve conceptualized, built, launched and expanded The Mechanical Licensing Collective to fulfill the mandate of the Music Modernization Act of 2018 and have paid out more than $3 Billion in royalties to music creators and rights-holders around the world.
I’ve had the honor of collaborating with some of the smartest people in the music rights sector to blend my passion for problem-solving, innovation and technology, education and advocacy to develop initiatives and industry-leading resources to empower music creators and other stakeholders to unlock black box royalties. I am grateful to be able to work fully within my passion and skillsets every day to affect change that directly impacts the livelihoods of music creators around the world.
In my role as Head of Third-Party Partnerships, I lead the Distributor Unmatched Recordings Portal (DURP) initiative connecting 114 music distributors in over 20 countries with one of the most important music rights datasets related to US digital streaming royalties, oversee a team across Latin America through the Radar initiative to locate and educate self-published songwriters and composers about their rights and entitlements in the US, and provide strategic support and guidance to the more than 500 companies around the world that access The MLC’s data through our data programs.
In 2020, The MLC was a developing concept. Today, we are a Music Business Association’s 2024 Impact Award for Technological Excellence recipient and a Fast Company’s 2025 Most Innovative Companies. And for my part, I was honored to be the recipient of a 2024 Bizzy Award for the Maestro of Metadata.
As I look ahead to the next 5 years of service, I’m looking forward to contributing to effect our mission to serve and pay our members the royalties they have earned.
Here’s to 5 years! 🥂
Are The People Who Are Creating AI Replacing Themselves With AI?
Microsoft just laid off 6,000 employees, including hundreds of software engineers and their Director of Artificial Intelligence. Microsoft also recently announced it will be investing further into AI development, which to me does not translate into an investment in humans.
This got me thinking.
Last week, I mentored a hackathon in Atlanta. A hackathon is a fast-paced software development event where individuals and teams participate to build a web or mobile app to win a prize. Our company, among others, offered our API and data for use by the participants to build a web app based on music business use cases.
There were over 20 participants. Most of them were seasoned software developers, but a few had little to no experience.
Many of the participants engaged in vibe coding, which is a process by which AI writes the code, for the web app they submitted to be judged. They gave the AI prompts related to the use case that they were solutioning and the AI wrote the code.
There were three winners. The 2nd place winner were two individuals who are not software developers at all and cannot write code — a music business educator/lawyer and a product designer. They used AI to design a prototype based on the lawyer’s prompts surrounding sample licensing analysis.
The room was full of software developers, but many of them used AI to write most of the code to build their web apps. Effectively, AI built the apps.
Microsoft is laying off software developers to invest more into AI itself developing AI software to further improve AI development of AI software.
Are the people who are creating AI replacing themselves…with AI?
Dae Bogan to Bring ‘The Power of Indie’ Music Business Workshop to ONErpm in Miami
Attention Miami Independent Music Community:
The Mechanical Licensing Collective and ONErpm presents
The Power of Indie: A Music Rights & Royalties Workshop for Indie Music Creators
Workshop lead by The MLC’s Head of Third-Party Partnerships, Dae Bogan
Friday, May 30th
6pm-9pm
ONErpm
226 NE 29th Street
Miami, FL 33137
Learn about:
- Being your own music publisher.
- The U.S. digital music royalties landscape.
- Turning metadata into dollars.
- Collecting multiple income streams from one release.
- Joining The MLC and more…
RSVP Required. Limited capacity. Refreshments served.
10 Years Ago Dubset (And I) Wanted Rights-holders To Be Friendlier To DJs…10 Years Later Apple Music Is Making It Possible
Ten years ago, I wrote a piece for Hypebot (posted at the end) announcing the Mix Transparency Report by Dubset (acquired by Pex).
At the time, Dubset, a new startup, wanted to help DJs legally release, distribute, and monetize mixed music (i.e. remixes, mashups, mixes, etc.), and get artists, songwriters, and rights-holders paid. However, there was a ton of resistance amongst rights-holders to what I thought was a great idea. I was biased since I had once managed a roster of DJs who specialized in mash-ups.
The Mix Transparency Report set out a new standard for charting the consumption of mixed music while shinning a light on the commercial opportunities that existed for rights-holders and content creators of derivative works (e.g. DJs, producers, remixers).
(Side Note: Last year, I created the “Beats & Money: A Music Rights & Royalties Crash Course for Beatmakers” webinar for The Mechanical Licensing Collective with support by Chris McMurtry of Pex/RME which you can watch on YouTube https://youtu.be/8ZoPRmJFt-Q.)
Dubset wanted to locate the most popular mixed music in the world, thoroughly analyze it, and share its findings every month. The report would offer full transparency with regards to the “who” and “what” was being listened to (often royalty-free) by millions of music fans a day. Initially, the Dubset report included four charts: Dubset’s 25 Most Sampled Labels, Dubset’s 25 Most Streamed Mixes, Dubset’s 25 Most Sampled Artists, and Dubset’s 25 Most Sampled Tracks.
Recently, Apple announced it is opening its catalog to let users build mix sets by integrating the platform with a number of tools. These tools include Algoriddim’s djay Pro software, hardware platforms AlphaTheta, Serato, inMusic’s Engine DJ, Denon DJ, Numark, and RANE DJ.
(Fun Fact: I was once an advisor to a startup that built a software and hardware for DJs that would be installed between the controller and the sound system. If the controller experienced an outage during a live set, the device would kick in and algorithmically continue the DJ set until the controller was back up and running and the DJ could do his or her thing. Having been both a club promoter and DJ manager in Los Angeles in my early 20’s, I knew it was solution was to a real problem that I’ve witnessed many times, but of course they were “too early.”)
TechCrunch believes the integrations will possibly attract DJs to explore Apple Music’s catalog of over 100 million songs and also give aspiring DJs an opportunity to play around with some of these tools. It’s great to see DSPs engage more meaningfully with DJs. This has been a long time coming, only slowed by rights-holders inability to work with companies like Dubset to figure out the licensing splits.
That Hypebot piece: https://daeboganmusic.com/2015/11/11/hypebot-dubset-releases-inaugural-mix-transparency-report-atlantic-records-david-guetta-most-sampled/
The Socioeconomics of Globalization vs. Glocalization and Why Indie Artists in the Global South Have It Harder
I have been having this very candid conversation about the digital music ecosystem and the socioeconomics (and sociocultural) factors at play in “globalization vs. glocalization” for years now.
Ever since I began exploring the “global south” in 2021, from South America to Southeast Asia to South Africa, and then subsequently moved to Latin America, I’ve observed challenges for local music creators and opportunities for Western music creators.
Artist earnings, in the digital space, are a factor of the socioeconomic health of the region in which artists receive most of their consumption. Two artists from two different countries with the same number of monthly listeners within their own country (glocalization) may not earn the same income due to the differences in the socioeconomic health of their respective countries.
The issue of socioeconomic health is exacerbated by poor copyright compliance and broken or insufficient licensing and royalty collection infrastructure.
Independent artists in lower socioeconomic markets could attempt to look for international collaborations with artists that can introduce them to listeners in more developed markets and they could leverage opportunities to exploit their music in ways that create discovery in new markets (e.g. synch, playlists, etc.). This will aid in exposing the music and eventually earning consumption in other foreign markets (globalization), possibly with better socioeconomic health (or at least higher royalty rates).
Additionally, indie artists should leverage communities like Vampr and BandLab Technologies and other such companies to connect and collaborate with artists, songwriters, and music producers to strive for cross-border appeal and opportunity.
Radar – Data-driven Grassroots Outreach In Latin America
I am thrilled to announce that after nearly 3 years of building relationships across Latin America, collaborating with local creator rights’ advocates, learning about some of the challenges affecting the flow of royalties in various regions, and educating songwriters, I am launching a dedicated team to support The Mechanical Licensing Collective’s mission to ensure songwriters, composers, lyricists, and music publishers in Latin America receive their mechanical royalties from streaming and download services in the U.S. accurately and on time.
RADAR is a data analytics and research platform that has already helped us identify songwriters who are self-published and potentially unaffiliated with their local CMO. Through culturally-relevant resources we are educating songwriters who may have royalties on hold at The MLC about their rights and their options for collecting their money such as joining their local CMO (an MLC member), hiring a publishing administrator (an MLC member), or, if it makes sense for their careers, to pursue direct membership. It is the songwriter’s choice within the framework of their local laws.
After a successful pilot in Colombia last year we are expanding across LATAM with team members in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico.
Welcome Daniela Arévalo Fernández (Mexico), Maria Ramirez (Colombia), Matías Bagato (Argentina), Renato Martini Martins (Brazil), and continued support by Stephanie Santiago-Rolón (Florida/Puerto Rico, USA) who has been a great collaborator in US-based Latin music since 2021.
Latin America, which has seen Mexico and Brazil named to IFPI’s Top 10 music markets in the world in 2024, is a priority due to the explosion of consumption of Latin music in the US, primarily in the form of digital streaming. The RIAA reported that Latin recorded music earned $1.4B in 2024 (98% of is from streaming), a steady increase over the previous two years, which also boasted over $1B. More US music consumers are listening to Spanish-language music every year; and when they do, it is our mission, in accordance with the Music Modernization Act to identify and locate the copyright owners to whom these digital audio mechanical royalties are due.
The MLC already has an incredible array of solutions, initiatives and technologies enabling us to match and pay out 90% of royalties received, but engaging small, new, and emerging independent artists is a challenge that all collection societies face and ought to solve.
With RADAR, whether it is a salsa band in Cali, a raggaeton artist in Medellin, a funk rapper in São Paulo, a samba singer in Salvador, a Latin rock duo in Buenos Aires, or an urbano group in Guadalajara, The MLC aims to take all reasonable efforts, from engaging CMOs and publishers, to tapping disconnected networks of independent self-published songwriters and composers to pay out every US digital mechanical dollar!
Introducing RADAR “Putting the hardest to find songwriters on The MLC’s radar.”
Encuentro Especial de Compositores Latinoamericanos (Special Meeting of Latin American Songwriters)
Can’t Sleep. Creating Impact
It’s after 1 AM on a week night and I’m not even close to wanting to stop the flow. I’m in “the zone.” That familiar zone I’ve been in many times in the past when I built SongBank, TuneRegistry (acquired), RoyaltyClaim (acquired), and the award-winning DURP for The Mechanical Licensing Collective.
I’m in that zone where the energy of working from sun down to sun up bringing an idea to life is fueled by my belief that this new data analytics and research platform will positively impact the lives of thousands of independent music creators around the world. I’m in that zone where sketches become models, models become plans, and plans become implementations.
It’s a feeling that my fellow serial entrepreneurs and passionate data nerds understand all too well. When you’re this excited—not for the launch itself, but rather for the first group of artists to be empowered by your resource—sleep nearly becomes impossible (although, I’ll force myself to stop and rest because high productivity requires it). But nevertheless, I’m excited.
In 2025, we’re putting more global independent songwriters on the RADAR.
[Podcast] SXSW 2025 – Scrubbing the System: Music Data Management Today
I enjoyed returning to SXSW earlier this month and the opportunity to join Jay Gilbert, Molly Neuman, and Rell Lafargue in discussing how companies are tackling and innovating on the challenge of music metadata.
Check out this podcast of our panel “Scrubbing the System: Music Data Management Today.”
[Podcast] SXSW 2025 – Crafting a Transparent Future for Music Rightsholders
Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of moderating the panel “Crafting a Transparent Future for Music Rightsholders” at SXSW. Joining me on stage were Chantal Epp (ClicknClear), Diego Maldonado (ONErpm), and Josh Simons (Vinyl Group). These companies are among the over 500 entities around the world that access The Mechanical Licensing Collective’s data through one or more of our data programs.
Click here to listen to the SXSW panel podcast to hear what we had to say about the future of transparency in music rights and data management on this podcast recording of our session.
View the PDF of the slides that were presented during the panel discussion. You can follow along with how the slides were presented by starting the podcast at audio mark 23:55.
Bonus: Below is a recording of a related webinar that I hosted last year during which each of these companies demonstrated how they leverage The MLC’s data in their businesses. Watch “Exploring The Use of The MLC’s Data: A Showcase of Three Companies”.
In accordance with the Music Modernization Act of 2018, The MLC develops and maintains a variety of data programs that are accessible to a diversity of companies around the world. The MLC’s database boasts over 30 Million musical works, with associated ownership information and matched sound recordings, and is enriched by our members and partners. As mandated by the MMA, The MLC makes the data available in bulk machine-readable formats and via an API.
Join The MLC’s Head of Third-Party Partnerships, Dae Bogan, in this 60-minute webinar showcasing real-world examples of The MLC’s data programs in use by differentiated technology companies around the world. Each of the selected showcase companies — ClickNClear (UK), Jaxsta (Australia), and ONErpm (Colombia) — will explain and demonstrate how it leverages The MLC’s data programs in the solutions that it offers to the music industry or in its backend operations.
Speakers:
· Jaxsta Showcase (Bulk Data Access Subscription) by Ben Orme, Jaxsta Product Lead / Business Development
· ClickNClear Showcase (Public Search API) by Chantal Epp, Founder & CEO
· ONErpm Showcase (DURP) by Diego Maldonado, Global Head of Publishing & Rights Management
DISCLAIMER: This video was uploaded to the MLC’s YouTube channel on 06/06/2024. Some content may no longer be accurate or up-to-date. For the latest information, please visit THEMLC.COM or reach out to our support team with any questions.
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