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I worked on a similar system for various music rights holders. It could be a record label, recording studio or even a song writer that holds a partial percenta

I worked on a similar system for various music rights holders. It could be a record label, recording studio or even a song writer that holds a partial percentage of the proceeds from a composition, performance, or recording, and the actual percentage owned could vary by country. So in Norway, Sony, Mom&Pop Music and your uncle Joe could hold various rights on a song, and in Sweden hold entirely different rights. Based on various revshares, contracts and agreements the amount paid out to each entity could vary as well - in my case sometimes they even varied on the platform it was played on, who played the song, etc. It's very complicated and there are a ton of edge cases. These edge cases is where a lot of the partial percentages and confusing ownerships come from. And it doesn't help that there's a lot of music out there for which the metadata is really bad. The majors have complicated systems to figure this out (not sophisticated-complicated, more like 1-million lines of business logic complicated), mainly because they have to.

buster 9y ago
But i think that's what the collecting societies of each country are for. Not every artist/composer is a member of one though, so that's probably where those come from. What can happen is, that a rights holders music is played in another country so that this countries collecting society has to transfer the money to the respective collecting society in his country. The collecting society then splits up the money for that song among all rights holders (labels, composers, songwriters, etc.). That's where small percentages and sub-cent calculations come from. At least that's how it works in germany. The GEMA (german collecting society for composers and such) collects money for songs being played in germany. The rights holder may not be a member of the GEMA and as such the money will be transfered to the collecting society of the member. At least that's my understanding. See https://www.gema.de/en/musikurheber/become-a-member/information-on-membership/ https://www.gema.de/en/musikurheber/become-a-member/informat... for distribution on authors/composers/publishers.
- Mindwipe 9y ago
  You can clear some rights through GEMA, but certainly not all.

buster 9y ago

But i think that's what the collecting societies of each country are for. Not every artist/composer is a member of one though, so that's probably where those come from. What can happen is, that a rights holders music is played in another country so that this countries collecting society has to transfer the money to the respective collecting society in his country. The collecting society then splits up the money for that song among all rights holders (labels, composers, songwriters, etc.). That's where small percentages and sub-cent calculations come from. At least that's how it works in germany. The GEMA (german collecting society for composers and such) collects money for songs being played in germany. The rights holder may not be a member of the GEMA and as such the money will be transfered to the collecting society of the member. At least that's my understanding. See https://www.gema.de/en/musikurheber/become-a-member/information-on-membership/ https://www.gema.de/en/musikurheber/become-a-member/informat... for distribution on authors/composers/publishers.

Mindwipe 9y ago
You can clear some rights through GEMA, but certainly not all.