The challenge
Fincons galvanizes SESAC’s digital strategy to heighten digital proficiency, accelerate innovation, and ramp-up sales and operation.
The average listener’s music library sits around 7,000 songs. Now imagine passing the 1 million song mark and having to keep track of all the copyrights associated with them. That’s what the team at SESAC does. They currently help manage licenses for over 30,000 songwriters and music creators spanning from legendary folk singer-songwriter Bob Dylan and country sensation Zac Brown, to power ballad diva Adele.
With the advent of streaming services in the music industry, licensers like SESAC have to adapt to audience demands of instant access to their favorite artists using Spotify or Apple Music. Songwriters too are expecting to reach bigger audiences with every release. For SESAC, cataloging that much music and effectively managing the licenses meant entering into the big data revolution.
While advances were being made in how listeners accessed music, the industry itself was working hard to keep up technologically to effectively manage licenses and copyrights. Matching copyrights to masters and categorizing the metadata agencies use to control the intellectual property (IP) of songs was often done manually in spreadsheets or, worse, a loose notebook. These legacy systems were hampering innovation.
SESAC set out to change that and quickly realized they needed a strong technology partner to help them on their digital transformation journey. Working with Fincons was a no-brainer considering their background in the television, film, and music industries.
“We knew Fincons would be able to pick up quickly on what we needed,” said Sam Kling, Chief Creative Officer at SESAC. “We knew what we wanted to achieve with our digital transformation project and Fincons helped us get there.”
The solution
Creating an All-Access Licensing Experience
SESAC wanted to build repertories with better functionality that would help both end user licensees and the songwriters themselves. That included song catalog management, royalty management, payment processing, and authentication with built-in best-of-breed search capabilities to easily sift through thousands of songs and their metadata in seconds.
Fincons’ work has allowed SESAC to access the same data as customers in real time to help facilitate synchronization licensing, a real game-changer for the industry.
“We’ve seen an increase in engagement on both portals, but especially on the licensee side. That’s because we’ve made licensing music from us easier than ever before and it’s had a direct impact on our revenue and bottom line,” claimed Kling.
The benefits
VIP Treatment from Fincons
Consistent with the royal treatment that a music star might expect, Fincons made sure SESAC’s every need was attended to. “We received a curated, concierge-level experience with Fincons and implementation was incredibly smooth,” noted Kling. “They figured out our needs by actually listening to us and asking the right questions. From there, they presented us with a clear vision forward with deadlines and expected costs that they stuck to. Our CIO even said it was the best third-party service provider experience they’ve ever had.”
Now offering a better, more enhanced user experience on a new technology stack for lower run costs, SESAC is excited about where the music industry is heading. Armed with the competitive advantage of agility, SESAC knows that when a new challenge arises that requires technological innovation, they’ll be prepared to ramp up quickly.
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