Asset Panda Helps Music Asset Management Companies Protect Their Bottom Line

Asset tracking has an almost infinite number of applications, and music asset management is no exception. What are music assets? In a nutshell, they’re recordings that may be licensed to customers for use in film, television, radio and other media. Production music libraries often produce and own the music assets outright – in other words, they own the copyrights. Customers may then license a piece of music from the library at a rate much lower than if they were to have a piece of music commissioned specifically for their needs, or if they were to try to license a piece of music from a household name recording artist. With the rise of streaming services, music royalties are even becoming an attractive financial asset class for investors.

Production music libraries make their money one of two ways, through licensing or synchronization fees; or performance income, also known as performance royalties. In this case, a customer pays the library for the rights to use the piece of music. Rates vary, of course, and sometimes are split between the library and the composer of the music. In other cases, the recording artist may be paid up front on a one-time basis. With performance income/royalties, musicians earn income when their pieces are performed.

As with any other company, production music libraries have to keep track of their assets, so a music asset management system makes good sense. Libraries must stay on top of copyrights, licensing, royalties and other administrative details. If they have customers in international markets, they may be subject to different regulations which also must be carefully monitored for compliance. A manual music asset management system will almost certainly result in mistakes and frustration. It’s a complex task to track and manage so many moving parts using an Excel spreadsheet. Human error is inevitable, and data isn’t likely to be in real time. It’s also time-consuming to pull data from an Excel spreadsheet to create a report. Excel spreadsheets are difficult to read, and if you have more than one employee charged with entering data, this is where the real problems can begin. A single Excel document can’t be open for edits by more than one person at a time. So let’s say an employee copies the spreadsheet, then enters her own data. Now two versions of the spreadsheet exist. Which is one is most current/accurate? If they’re both correct, now somebody has to consolidate the data. Needless to say, this can cause headaches. Excel also can’t tell you who on your team has changed a particular piece of data, or when she changed it – and those details are sometimes critical.

Asset Panda makes music asset management easier than ever before. Powered by free mobile iOS and Android apps, Asset Panda syncs with the cloud and includes a mobile barcode scanner, so there’s no need for any additional hardware. All you need is the smartphone or tablet you already carry. The entire lifecycle of your music assets is as near as the palm of your hand. And, because the app syncs with the cloud, your data is always served up in real time, 24 hours day. With Asset Panda, you can make informed decisions about your assets, create customized reports, set up custom notifications and alerts, and organize your data in the way that makes sense for your organization. This powerful, yet simple to use platform is also flexible enough to incorporate new technologies as they become available in the future.

Try Asset Panda free for 14 days, and see what it can do for your music asset management efforts. To learn more, go to www.assetpanda.com