Business benefits of implementing MWN

The choreography and messaging between musical work rights holders and downstream data recipients defined in the MWN standard improves data quality, which enables more efficient data processing. Better data quality and efficiency means cost savings and more timely communication. The implementation of MWN also provides options for incorporating other processes into the workflow.

Data quality

As a result of automated exchange of data using DDEX’s MWN standard, the reduced volume of manually re-keyed data being sent between parties via emails and alternative formats provides higher reliability and quality of data. This is further enhanced by the greater reliance on metadata sourced directly from authoritative systems and by the updating of musical work and/or right share data from a rights holder to a CMO or the other way round.

The structured data associated with the MWN standard makes troubleshooting of critical data information issues easier without reference to the standard specifications.

Also, the MWN standard can be used to directly communicate reconciled right share pictures for full transparency and right share conflicts from a CMO to rights holders, which allows correcting wrong data, possibly using MWN messages to revoke rights shares in a musical work previously communicated by a rights holder to a CMO.

Flexibility

A key design principle of the MWN standard is that modular transactions are enabled with the benefit that complex right share data need not be recommunicated after an initial registration: Usage metadata (e.g. works-to-recordings s) can be communicated after the use of the work has been recorded, to enrich the work and enable recipients to maximise their service without, as today, having to reconcile copyright data repeatedly at the risk of inaccuracy and duplication. This efficiency may also help copyright reconciliation costs at recipients over the long term.

Also, the flexibility of the MWN messages enables the sending of right share information that does not add up, in the aggregate, to 100%. This recognises that rights holders that have a part share in a musical work frequently do not know the identity or the rights shares of other rights holders in that work. Similarly, the MWN standard enables the communication of more robust recording and exploitation information, clearly distinguishing between attributes of musical works, sound recordings and exploitations such as audio-visual productions.

Efficiency

Efficiency improvements are mainly due to the automation of processes that previously involved the manual creation of emails. This is because all data necessary to create outgoing MWN messages can be automatically populated from a sender’s database. Similarly, such responses can then be ingested and ed automatically to the relevant musical work.

The MWN standard enables musical work claiming (a.k.a. registration), including complex multi-territory, multi-dates, multi-rights and multi-usage dimensions, and the communication of change and loss of rights with regards to these dimensions.

The MWN standard enables the consolidation of various messages and files (such as policies or relinquishments) that a publisher would otherwise need to send separately to DSPs.

Increased efficiency through automation using the MWN standard also means that the volume of requests processed can be increased with less resource, so the amount of work to be done in other areas can be expanded without hiring new teams.

Precision

The MWN standard enables a single comprehensive communication of rights information at work level, meaning that controlled rights and usages can be communicated with a greater precision. The benefit is particularly for data exchanges related to digital rights and usages, resulting in efficiency and accuracy, avoiding work-around processes at work level. This negates disputes caused by the inability to provide the necessary granularity.

Also, the s between sound recording or exploitation data and musical work data that is being captured as a result of the exchange of MWN messages once ingested into the relevant systems can be “re-used” and pushed out in MWN registrations to other sources. For example, to organisations such as The Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC) and DSPs, where that between sound recording and musical work is most important in ensuring payments are made. This will increase the speed of payouts from other sources and reduce the danger of payments being held in escrow.

The use of MDX as a data hub increases the visibility of the data of sound recordings ed to musical works through access to a dashboard of information (such as timestamps and relevant statuses). This also improves the transparency of processes and allows tracking of the status of the data and any appropriate s, as reports can be pulled and shared between parties regarding what is being processed and what is outstanding. The benefits of this information being visible in a hub enables the easier transfer of catalogues of musical works. Such a hub also provides access to multiple ISRCs relating to a single work.

Timeliness

Through the use of the MWN messages requests can be routed to the likely rights holders of new works in the fastest way currently possible without additional manual steps and the danger of user manual oversight. Responses can be ingested daily and mapped back to the original request and musical work. This facilitates a more comprehensive and strategic management of the large volume of rights holder responses/claims that record companies receive on an ongoing basis. The ability to receive, assess and act on rights holder responses on a faster and broader basis speeds up the overall process for making and communicating rights holder claims.

Incorporating other processes

Implementing MWN enables moving email work which takes place in isolation into internal system integrations. This enables the automatic connection of data in the internal system upon receipt of a right share claim response, effectively a one-click action to match musical works to sound recordings. This also means an improvement in the internal tracking of requests and enables better follow up and missing split queries processing.

Once MWN is implemented it is much easier to gain the benefits of other messages, such as the Letters of Direction (LoD) standard, used in conjunction with it to automate more processes.

The creation of a standardised, shared, connected process between parties utilising MWN messages supports enhancements which improve existing workflow going forward, and may provide opportunities to align processes with other parties involved in parallel initiatives or activities.