Distribution and payments platform Stem has launched its Royalty Services product.
Earlier this year, Stem CEO & co-founder Milana Lewis spoke to Music Week about the company’s ambitions to reach more clients beyond its distribution roster.
The Royalty Services product helps labels to simplify the process of calculating and paying royalties, whoever they distribute with. According to the statement, independent labels can work with Stem to “gain more insight into their royalty obligations, feel more confident that their calculations are accurate, and spend less time making payments”.
Stem aims to help labels overcome multiple challenges with royalties, including incomes from a wide range of sources and partners; complex contract terms; multiple collaborators on a track who need to be paid; artist projects across multiple labels and distributors.
The tech company has questioned why the speed of payments from streaming have lagged behind other digital sectors.
Music creators and teams signed up to the platform will get access to a clear dashboard showing their earnings over time. The unified dashboard will enable them to view and collect their royalty income from multiple labels in one place.
Over the past year, Stem has worked with labels and artist teams like Quality Control, 3LAU, Fool’s Gold and Our Vinyl to understand the challenges facing royalty finance teams.
This is the next step in our mission to improve financial clarity for the entire music industry
Brendan Kao
In partnership with Curve, Stem will help labels to manage contract data, track earnings from DSPs and other sources, and easily verify that each statement is accurate.
“This is the next step in our mission to improve financial clarity for the entire music industry,” said Stem chief product officer Brendan Kao. “Labels need a clear dashboard to understand royalty obligations and payments, and artists deserve clear insight into what they’re owed. Now Stem can offer that experience whether you distribute with us or not.”
Stem Royalty Services is available to eligible labels and other music companies with “significant royalty obligations”.
The company can work on assisting with contracts, catching up on previous royalty periods, and ingesting regular statements from DSPs and more. Once finalised, labels can fund payments to hundreds or thousands of recipients with a single transaction, while artists can view and manage payments from multiple labels in a single portal.
“Stem's software makes royalty data easy to read to the point that I actually want to log in myself to look at trends,” said Coach K of Quality Control Music. “With any other solution I would wait for my team to generate a report and then wait again while they pull the important details out of a massive spreadsheet. QC is about innovation, so we like using technology to move fast and keep setting trends for the industry.”
PHOTO: (L-R)
Brad Bennett, CTO
Tracey Melnick, VP, Royalty Services
Milana Rabkin Lewis, CEO
Brendan Kao, CPO
Charleton Lamb, Head of Marketing
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