Whether your tastes lie with classical music or something more rock and pop, the digitalisation of the music industry has created a major headache for the music industry in controlling the accurate payment of royalties and keeping track of licenses. The rapid growth in Broadband Internet access worldwide has changed the way music service providers make music accessible to consumers. With digital music distribution being borderless, traditional territorial approaches to the licensing of performance rights are being challenged.

Across the industry there are now multiple, often-conflicting and/or incomplete views of who owns the rights to what song in what territory and for what type of use. This lack of clarity means that royalty payments are being slowed, held-back and potentially paid inaccurately – a situation that seriously impacts all levels of the industry – from global recording labels to individual garage-based performers.

The recommended solution is to create, for the first time, a single, authoritative view of all songs, for all territories, and for all uses, in a ‘Global Repertoire Database’ (GRD). Deloitte has been commissioned as project manager on a working group comprising organisations from across the music publishing industry, including iTunes, Google, EMI Music Publishing, Universal Music Publishing and PRS for Music, and created to oversee the development of the GRD solution.

To date, Deloitte has achieved an unprecedented level of cross-industry collaboration and openness, including the engagement of over 80 organisations and more than 450 individuals across six continents, representing music authors, publishers, societies, music service providers, consumers, business users, recording artists, managers, record companies, legislative bodies, and information management companies. We have also increased CEO understanding and commitment to the implementation of Release 1 of the GRD solution and secured finance for the next phase of the project - Requirements and Design.

It is through these achievements that we are uniquely positioned to take a leading role in subsequent phases of the project. At the same time we have developed enormous credibility within the industry, both in our ability to understand the challenges, and our capability to develop innovative responses.