#TBT Reflecting On Being Named A Billboard 2019 Digital Power Player And Looking To The Future Of Music Rights
Exactly one year ago, I was named a Billboard 2019 Digital Power Player in recognition of my work at the intersection of music rights and technology.
As the founder and CEO of two music rights software companies—TuneRegistry and RoyaltyClaim—I empowered independent music creators and rights-holders from over 40 countries with tools to protect and administer their copyrights in the United States and to uncover unclaimed royalties and music licenses around the world.
I started my career in the music industry as an independent artist and self-published songwriter, then evolved into an advocate of music creators as first an artist manager and eventually the owner/operator of an independent record label and independent music publishing company. Later, I pivoted from being hands-on the music to conceptualizing and developing technological solutions to address some of the challenges I faced while wearing the many hats that I had worn.
Today, I am writing yet another chapter in my career book as the Head of Third-Party Partnerships at The Mechanical Licensing Collective and as a Lecturer of Musicology (music industry entrepreneurship) at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music. At these organizations I play a new role in supporting music creators from the earliest start of their careers through the legacy of their musical works.
As I reflect on my passion and look to the future I am excited to imagine how I can contribute in some meaningful way to the careers and livelihoods of thousands of music creators; especially independent artists and self-published songwriters.
During The Coronavirus Pandemic, Dae Bogan Has Helped DIY Musicians Unlock Tens of Thousands Of Dollars In Unclaimed Music Royalties – Here’s How
For over twelve years I have helped thousands of DIY musicians administer and monetize their copyrights to be properly accounted to and paid for the use of their musical works and sound recordings in the United States and abroad. To date, I’ve helped self-published songwriters and self-released artists collect millions of dollars in royalties that would have otherwise gone unclaimed and eventually forfeited and/or redistributed due to a confusing web of regulations and company policies surrounding the fragmented music licensing ecosystem.
I’ve also helped background vocalists, session musicians, and music producers understand how their contributions, while often detached from copyright ownership, generates entitlements that yield royalties that often go unclaimed for many years. I am passionate about the issue of remuneration for music creators and have published research, built technology platforms, and have spoken at the Library of Congress on the topic.
A few years ago I wrote the free ebook “The DIY Musician’s Starter Guide To Being Your Own Label And Publisher” for the non-profit creator advocacy group CreativeFuture as a checklist for DIY musicians who own their publishing and/or masters. The ebook has helped many DIY musicians to get setup with US music rights organizations to collect their royalties. I’ve also written dozens of articles on specific issues surrounding royalty collection that have been published on my blog DaeBoganMusic.com and other websites.
All of this to say that for over a decade I have been championing, educating, advocating for, and empowering DIY musicians and yet I still feel that so many of them are underserved and missing out on their own earnings.
Right now tens of thousands of artists, songwriters, composers, lyricists, session musicians, background vocalists, and music producers have been hit hard by the closure of live music venues and slow down of music production during the coronavirus pandemic. Many have struggled to get financial assistance due to the gig economy nature of much of the work in the music industry. But the sad part is many DIY musicians may have money due to them from their music and contributions over the last 5 to 7 years!
Since the pandemic began, I’ve helped several DIY musicians uncover royalties that have been sitting in unclaimed royalties databases or so-called “black boxes” (Tip: Search “black box” in my search field above to find articles I’ve written on the topic) to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars (Note: I did this work prior to joining The MLC in May 2020 and I am not currently accepting clients due to the fact that I am 100% committed to my work at The MLC, but please continue reading to learn how to do this yourself).
Searching for unclaimed royalties is part of the royalty forensics process. Understanding what entitlements a musician has based on their contribution(s) to any given work, what royalties are due based on type of use and territory, and where the royalties flow to be accounted to and paid out can be a challenge. I did this work for my clients, but I also have a workshop on the topic (Tweet me @daeboganmusic to request FREE access to the workshop).
For example, my cousin, independent singer-songwriter Durand Bernarr had around $8k in unclaimed royalties for his contribution as a background vocalist on the song “Girl” by The Internet sitting unclaimed at just one organization in the United States. Although these royalties were due to him in 2018, the AFM & SAG-AFTRA Intellectual Property Rights Distribution Fund did not know who Durand Bernarr was or how to reach him. I helped Durand uncover these royalties during the coronavirus pandemic and the payment couldn’t have come at a more needed time.
Unclaimed royalties is a common problem for new and up-and-coming music creators (but it also affects emerging and established music creators) and it stems from poor metadata and production credits creation and distribution (this is why I founded TuneRegistry and RoyaltyClaim (I no longer own these companies)). It also stems from DIY musicians not being properly setup and registered everywhere (I cover this in my free ebook).
I now work at The Mechanical Licensing Collective (The MLC) as its Head of Third-Party Partnerships where I am building relationships between The MLC and a variety of organizations and companies to help self-administered songwriters and music publishers interface with us to unlock and collect digital audio mechanical royalties from the use to their songs in the United States by digital service providers such as Spotify, Apple, Amazon, Google, Pandora, Deezer, Tidal, SoundCloud and more.
Now is the time for DIY musicians to take the time to hunt down unclaimed royalties that may go back as far as 7 years. Check out my free ebook as a starting point!
Pro Tip: If you find unclaimed royalties in one place, there may be more and other places. Check with the organization where you find your royalties if those royalties are for the US only or the world. If for the US only, you may have counterpart unclaimed royalties for the same set of rights and types of usage in other countries!
On To The Next – Dae Bogan Departs TuneRegistry
Photo: Launch of TuneRegistry at SXSW Pitch Stage
After five passionate years of developing and operating one of the most important music rights administration companies that empowered thousands of DIY music creators and small to medium-sized rights-holders from around the world to “take back their rights” and unlock millions of dollars in unclaimed and unmatched royalties, I am humbled to announce that my journey with TuneRegistry has come to an end.
I want to thank every DIY music creator and artist manager who’ve flooded my inboxes with questions about music publishing, copyright administration, royalties, and licenses over the years. Your curiosities became source material for the ways in which my products evolved over time. From launching our relationship with Harry Fox Agency to enable you, for the first time, to unlock your Spotify mechanical royalties to onboarding Gracenote and TiVo to help you deliver and enrich your metadata in the digital music ecosystem, if it weren’t for the valid challenges that you faced and the ways in which you felt dismissed or overlooked by the music industry establishment I would have never had the courage and strength to found TuneRegistry and RoyaltyClaim.
We were disruptors.
I will be spending the coming weeks reflecting on the work that we did over the years, which led to my being named a Billboard “Digital Power Players 2019,” and explore opportunities where my journey may take me next.
Passionately Yours,
Dae Bogan
Music Creators’ Rights Advocate
Dae Bogan To Join Other Music Industry Experts At US Copyright Office Symposium On Unclaimed Royalties Study in Washington, D.C.
I am honored to announce that on December 6th, three weeks from today, I will be representing the US independent music creators community at a symposium in Washington, D.C. at the The Library of Congress.
A few weeks ago, I was invited by the newly appointed Copyright Royalty Judge, Steve Ruwe, to speak at the Copyright Office’s symposium on unclaimed royalties at The Library of Congress. As a CRJ, Mr. Ruwe is among just three judges who are responsible for setting the royalty rates that all songwriters in the world are paid for the use of their songs in the United States.
Last year, my 2016/2017 research titled “The State of Unclaimed Royalties and Music Licenses in the United States,” — research that led me to founding the world’s first search engine of unclaimed music royalties and licenses and a gateway to initiate claims, RoyaltyClaim (acquired by HAAWK Inc.) — was referenced, and I was personally consulted, by the United States Congressional Budget Office during its analysis of the economic impact of the then-current bill, Music Modernization Act. That bill became law in October 2018 and is now known as the Orrin G. Hatch–Bob Goodlatte Music Modernization Act 2018 (MMA or Music Modernization Act for short).
I have been fighting to ensure that independent and unsigned self-published songwriters are recognized, empowered, and represented in the US music industry for over a decade now. My first break-through was conceptualizing and co-founding TuneRegistry, which enables self-published songwriters to administer their catalog and unlock performance and mechanical royalties while keeping 100% of their copyrights and 100% of their royalties. TuneRegistry has helped thousands of self-published lyricists, composers, producers, and singer-songwriters protect their copyrights and unlock hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars in unpaid and current royalties as well as enter into direct licensing deals with digital music services and social media platforms.
I look forward to discussing how the Copyright Office will develop outreach and messaging strategies to reach and engage self-published music creators and I hope to ensure that these creators continue to have a voice in the room, if not a SEAT AT THE TABLE.
US Copyright Office Announcement: https://www.copyright.gov/newsnet/2019/784.html
Dae Bogan, Along With Marcus Cobb, Interviewed By Music Business Association
Music payment and workflow management startup Jammber has developed a series of mobile apps that helps artists eliminate guesswork from the process of recording music ownership, allowing them to focus on doing what they love: writing music. Last month, Jammber announced that it had acquired TuneRegistry, a move that would establish Jammber as a full-service solution for creatives to both report music ownership and manage rights administration. We sat down with Jammber CEO Marcus Cobb and the company’s newly appointed SVP of Global Music Rights, TuneRegistry co-founder and CEO Dae Bogan, to discuss the acquisition and what it means for both the future of the company and the industry.
Music Biz: Congratulations on the exciting acquisition! What inspired this move to unite Jammber and TuneRegistry’s offerings?
DB: Thank you! My co-founders, Kara McGehee and Shane Zilinskas, and I have been actively looking to bring our music rights administration platform into an environment where our strength in works registrations, copyright research, and managing relationships with music rights organizations could be complementary to a broader suite of services aimed to empower DIY musicians and small to medium sized rights-holders. We’ve been big fans of Jammber for several years now and recently Jammber became an Enterprise client of TuneRegistry. We took that opportunity to learn more about Marcus’ long-term vision for Jammber and all parties realized that our visions were quite aligned, so why not our products!
MC: There are three key steps to getting paid for your music: keeping track of the songs you work on and everyone you collaborate with; registering those songs, collaborations and ownership amounts; and finally collecting payment. TuneRegistry has spent the last five years perfecting the registration process with a focus on allowing publishers, distributors and creatives to easily register their songs across North America. By adding that service to the Jammber suite we’re able to bring payments closer to the creative process which in turn makes them more accurate and faster. That is the holy grail of music metadata and has the power to change so many lives.
Music Biz: How do creatives stand to benefit from adding TuneRegistry’s skillset to Jammber’s DIY platform?
DB: What Jammber does well is to get in at the onset of the creative process to help creators to start capturing the necessary metadata that would be later required to properly protect and administer rights. Jammber is there early enough to encourage creators to think about the ownership splits and rights surrounding their musical project. What TuneRegistry does well is to simplify and streamline the rights administration process. It is a natural hand-off from Jammber to TuneRegistry that we’re working to make as seamless as possible in the creation-to-administration workflow.
MC: Exactly. It’s about simplifying the complexities of getting paid and credit in this industry. Dae is a foremost expert in song registrations and administration. There are splits apps and song registration platforms and payment platforms that already exist. But the only way to really make it as simple as possible is to bring everything together into a seamless experience for creatives. In order to make something simple you have to understand the complexities enough to know what can be taken away or changed. Having the TR team on board expedites our learning process.
Read the full interview here.
Dae Bogan To Speak At A3C Conference
I look forward to joining Marcus Cobb at this year’s A3C Conference to present “Ownership & Song Registration in the Palm of Your Hand” on Saturday, October 12th, at 2:30pm.
Presentation Description: In this digital age of music, songs have the ability to go from conception to the public in the blink of an eye. Within this new age, it has never been as vital to establish ownership and collect metadata as it is today. In short, your money depends on it! Learn how Jammber’s game-changing technology puts ownership and song registration in the palm of your hand.
***Earlier this month, Jammber announced its acquisition of TuneRegistry. The story was covered in Music Business Worldwide, Billboard, Music Connection, Digital Music News, Hypebot, and others.***
Breaking: Jammber Acquires TuneRegistry
I am super excited about this!
I’ve been a fan of Marcus and Jammber, and they of me/TuneRegistry, since I first learned of Jammber. Over the last few years, TuneRegistry has been empowering thousands of songwriters, artists, and publishers while Jammber has been empowering producers, engineers, studios and labels. By bringing our expertise and resources together, we believe to have established the first economical end-to-end music business platform for music creations and workflow management, rights administration, and royalty processing for all music creators and rights-holders.
In the coming months, we will be working to integrate TuneRegistry into the Jammber product suite as well as beefing up the Los Angeles-based music rights administration department under my direction as Jammber’s Senior Vice President, Global Music Rights. I look forward to continuing to empower music creators and rights-holders with effective tools and resources to self-administer their catalogs via Jammber’s suite of products.
https://www.musicconnection.com/jammber-acquires-tuneregistry/
Demystifying TuneRegistry And The Concept Of Subscription-Based Self-Publishing Administration
Why I Founded TuneRegistry
When I managed artists, I made this “Song Processing Checklist” to keep track of everywhere that I was aware of to register my artists’ music. It was daunting. TuneRegistry simplifies this.
Nearly 10 years ago I founded my first music company. It was called Renaissance Artist Management (RAM Artist) and I managed DJs who I had for several years prior booked often to play club events that I produced while in undergrad at UCLA. Some of these DJs were also aspiring music producers, so later I launched Loft24 Records and Loft24 Publishing to help them collaborate with artists and topliners. I picked name Loft24 because I was 24 years old and I lived in a loft in Downtown Los Angeles, which had been a goal of mine since my youth (I have no idea why). I had also signed my first two live acts – a singer/songwriter and a rapper/songwriter — after producing a multi-city mall talent search tour for Reebok…they were the winners.
Prior to founding RAM Artist, Loft24 Records, and Loft24 Publishing, I had some music business exposure having grew up in a multi-generational music family and having been an aspiring musician myself, but my knowledge was nowhere near as expansive as it is today (insert a lot of self-teaching and an eventual masters degree in music business).
One of the things I was really good at as a manager and music entrepreneur was creating systems and processes to make workflows efficient. This was necessary considering all of the tasks I had to juggle as an artist manager, label owner, and music publisher. And I had a daytime job as VP of Marketing & Partnerships of a youth-targeted retail chain and founder/GM of its music division.
I had previously built database-driven e-commerce systems at two companies where I had worked in marketing; and with a history of event production, I was generally a very logistical and process-oriented person.
At the time that I was managing artists, DJs, producers, songwriters and marketing music, I was unaware of software that would make my life easier in these administrative tasks. So, I built my own.
I had previously developed a checklist of everywhere that I was aware of where my client’s music needed to be registered before it was released. I used this “Song Processing Checklist” for every work in our catalog. I’d manually login to ASCAP and the Copyright Office systems to register works and record confirmation numbers. It was daunting!
To pitch our catalog, I built an internal platform called “Music Licensing Portal” (basically an early version of what DISCO or SourceAudio is today). I’d invite music supervisors to search our catalog and initiate sync license requests.
Then I built what would be my first music tech startup, SongBank, a marketplace where A&R’s could shop for unpublished songs using an audio fingerprint of a reference songs. SongBank was described as a robust cloud-based project management platform developed specifically for songwriters and record label A&Rs (I’m still unaware of anything like it on the market). I wanted to help undiscovered songwriters get placements on major label projects after my experience pitching my writers to A&Rs. I had brought on advisers who were A&Rs or VP of A&R at Hollywood Records, Island Def Jam Music Group, Roc Nation, and Atlantic Records. I later stopped working on SongBank to launch Maven Promo (formerly ChazBo Music), which is an in-store independent music video network, which I sold to EMPIRE Distribution last year to fund the development and launch of RoyaltyClaim, the world’s first search engine of unclaimed music royalties, which I later sold to Haawk Inc and then to Made In Memphis Entertainment this year.
All of this leads me to this: TuneRegistry.
TuneRegistry is a software like no other. I conceptualized it based on all of the above experience (although I had been working on it prior to RoyaltyClaim). What started as a Word Doc checklist of places to register my client’s songs has evolved into a robust software to streamline the process of registering works across rights organizations, delivering music metadata across the music industry, the management of disputes and conflicts, and the insurance of royalty accountability, all in one place.
We had a setback for a few months, when I had to buy the company back from a company that had acquired it in 2017, but will be launching an new and improved platform on October 1st and I can’t wait
(Photos below are of the tools and platforms that I referenced above. I built these in my early twenties to operate my music companies and manage my clients’ careers more efficiently.)
My Thoughts On The MMA In Light Of The CRB Mechanical License Rate Decision
In light of the CRB’s ruling today to increase mechancial royalty rates for on-demand DSPs, I would caution against passing the Music Modernization Act without first amending it to include some very necessary guarantees for DIY musicians.
Given the recent ruling to increase mechanical rates, penalize DSPs for late payments, and remove the TCC cap DSPs will be more incentivized to cling to the safe harbor components of the MMA to limit their financial responsibility to songwriters.
I also fear that the blanket license (combined with the elimination of the statutory damages provision against infringement) would hurt more DIY musicians than protect compared to the existing compulsory licensing schema where today an independent can fully self-administer his/her mechancial rights via a service like TuneRegistry or with a third-party administrator like Songtrust. Why? Because the unclaimed/unpaid (aka “black box”) royalty fund will also increase by 44%, giving major publishers a bigger windfall of market share distributed gains from a royalty pool that generally belongs to unidentified independent songwriters.
What incentive does DSPs, who must pay the rates anyway, and major publishers, who will undoubtedly control the mechanical licensing collective body, have to ensure the works of DIY musicians are properly represented and accounted to and what power do DIY musicians have to assert their limited rights?
I could be completely and utterly wrong.
However, the devil is in the details and the MMA, while it does streamline the process of mechancial licensing in the United States for DSPs it also effectively limits the warranties and representations of DIY musicians.
Every article written about MMA is generally written from the perspective of publishers and NMPA members. As an advocate for and service provider to DIY musicians, my perspective is a bit different and more nuanced.
The decision today by the CRB was a win for all songwriters. The MMA is a win for major publishers. It must be amended.
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