They've invented the solution to the music industry's 'black box'. And it's free.

 

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Max Martin, ABBA's Björn Ulvaeus, and songwriter and producer Niclas Molinder say they've invented the solution to the music industry's 'black box'. And it's free. Each year, royalties worth an estimated $655 million (£500m) globally are not paid to the correct rightsholders due to bad data. To address the issue of hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of royalties landing in the industry's so-called 'black box', rather than in the bank accounts of rightsholders, ABBA's Björn Ulvaeus launched the 'Credits Due' campaign in 2021 to get creators paid for their work. BMG became one of the first international music companies to commit to the initiative, and the likes of SoundCloud, Hipgnosis and Kobalt Music Publishing are also listed amongst the campaign's supporters. Now, with Credits Due having caught the attention of the music business, Ulvaeus is going one step further to fix music's missing data problem. The superstar artist has teamed up with his fellow Swedish producer/songwriters Max Martin and Niclas Molinder to develop technology that aims to directly combat inadequate creator data collection. The trio's new data tool is called Session Studio. It's already secured over £1 million ($1.3m) in funding from two notable investors – Spotify and YouTube – while its other supporters include ProTools-maker Avid, Universal Music Group, and DDEX. Niclas Molinder tells MBW that incorrect metadata is a big problem for the modern music business, for both music's creators and its investors. "The vast amount of new songs released on a daily basis, many with very little metadata and missing linked identifiers causes enormous problems for the music industry," he says. Molinder adds: "These problems are the reason why so much royalty money each year is unidentified and not paid out to the people who created the music." Session is an evolution of Auddly, which was launched by Max Martin, Niclas Molinder and Björn Ulvaeus a few years back to "fill the gap in the music industry’s data and money flow". With Session and its free Session Studio app, Martin, Molinder and Ulvaeus are aiming to take this idea global, enabling music-makers to capture accurate song data at the point of creation. Cleverly, Session Studio is actually embedded within Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs) to capture authoritative song information and data as soon as creators get to work. The platform enables songwriters/producers to assign credit to multiple creators in the studio via its unique 'Creator Credits' system – and to set the splits of royalties each of these creators will receive in future. Explains Molinder: "Every creator that has a Session profile, can ensure all the information is captured. When it’s time to release a track, Session can send releases downstream in the music ecosystem to labels, publishers and societies in the necessary format with all the correct information attached."  In a joint statement, Molinder, Martin, and Ulvaeus say: "By using innovative technology and working with industry partners, we’re creating a trusted reference point, open to everyone who needs to register, credit and pay the right people. "This saves time, effort and money for all those involved – from song idea to release and beyond – making music work better for everyone. "We do it for the love of the music and passion for those who make it. That’s why Session Studio is free of charge for creators and always will be, we will never charge for the collection and management of credits and metadata. " Here, Molinder tells MBW why Session was founded, how it is tackling the issue of so-called 'black box' revenues in the music business, and how it hopes "to transform the industry’s ability to create and reward creators". READ THE FULL INTERVIEW ON MBW