From Dissonance to Harmony in Performance Rights (WIN Annual Report op-ed)

In an opinion piece published in WIN 2024-25 Annual Report, Henry Thomas, Cactus Co-Founder & COO, a long-time contributor to the WIN Performance Rights Group, shares his views on current challenges and the future of performance rights.

Performance rights gets a lot of attention and generates a lot of activity these days. We hear that there are pots of money sitting uncollected out there, that the system is fragmented and lacking global standards or, worse, non-existent in many territories (performance rights are managed in about a third of the countries that have publishing infrastructure). Unlike the publishing industry, though, it’s not an activity that actually creates value. All those of us working in this area are doing is collecting income that arises from value created upstream. People would be forgiven, then, for wondering “if collections are all you do, why haven’t you worked out a standard way of delivering repertoire, a standard way of receiving royalties, a standard way of understanding how repertoire is performing? Why does it all take so long?!”

I’m not going to bang on about how things aren’t working; that’s dull and pointless. Instead, I want to highlight the important initiatives, all bound up in a spirit of collaboration, which are going to change the way that performance rights are managed and, hopefully, address these questions.

The most important of these initiatives for rights holders is RDx.

WIN was fundamental to its creation and continues to be key to its success alongside IFPI. It’s important to put aside any indie/major animus here because RDx is explicitly a cooperative project; a joint-venture between the two organisations with stakeholders across indies, majors, MLCs and tech companies. It’s an incredible opportunity for indies to have an equal voice and equal access to the performance rights network. Collecting performance income is not at heart a competitive business. Ultimately, everyone wants the same thing: accurate, timely payments achieved as frictionlessly as possible.

RDx goes a long way to fixing some of these problems and ensures that all participating rights holders are operating on a level playing field. Every rights holder sends the same message in and every MLC receives the same message out. There is no prioritisation, no hierarchy, no gatekeeping.

The challenge for the WIN community is one of access to this transformative system. Right now, only the most well-resourced labels have the finance and capability to develop a feed to RDx, which means the long tail of globally significant indies who don’t have the resource or, perhaps, inclination to build a tech solution end up in a two-tier system.

No one starts a label to collect performance income and it’s putting the cart before the horse to expect anyone to prioritise this. So, solutions need to be found to give those rights holders access to RDx, without having to build and maintain the digital infrastructure to do this themselves.

What are the options, then? I see a future where a range of service providers will facilitate rights holders’ repertoire delivery to RDx. MLCs will do this for local members, and AGEDI, GVL and SCF are already having success here. Distribution and rights management companies will offer this as an add-on to their core operations. We are on the cusp of neighbouring rights agents delivering to RDx too, which creates the opportunity for more competitive commission rates. Maybe royalty platforms will interface with RDx. Maybe data aggregation companies will. There will certainly be services following the model of my company, Cactus, which are built specifically to meet the need to deliver to RDx but also come with the tools to manage the end-to-end process for anyone enterprising enough to take things in-house.

Recognising the end-to-end process is important in understanding the limits of what RDx can do. RDx doesn’t fix all the processes involved in managing collections; there will still be unclaimed lists to check, there will still be disputes to resolve, there will still be messy reporting flowing from licensees to MLCs to rights holders. We are still a long way from global harmonisation on data standards. This is where WIN is so important for the independent community. The WIN Performance Rights Group that I’ve participated in for over a decade is another place of collaboration, where we work through issues in collections, keep each other (and the wider WIN community) up-to-date on what’s happening and solve problems together. WIN is also now pooling the knowledge and experience we’ve gained to help others answer the fundamental question of “what income is out there and how to access it?”

Then, the really granular detail of data harmonisation is tackled via the standards coming out of the DDEX working groups, which are—you’ve guessed it—collaborative across a range of stakeholders. There is a new performance rights standard on the way, which will be adopted by RDx, and then a much-needed standard for the royalty reporting and distribution statements that MLCs send out. DDEX and RDx are, then, standardising the data flowing to MLCs, the reporting coming out of MLCs and even the process and forum for managing rights conflicts.

Looking further ahead, there are a bunch of new MLCs lined up to use RDx, many in emerging markets. These markets continue to generate excitement for the growth potential both in the volume and size of distributions globally. But let’s not kid ourselves that they open up a treasure chest of royalties for rights holders in more mature markets just yet. And I would caution against anyone making unrealistic demands of nascent MLCs before they have had a chance to make things work for their local members. In order for licensing, particularly public performance, to be effective, licensed premises need to feel there is value to be added locally rather than value to be extracted by foreign companies.

Data aggregation and business intelligence will increasingly draw insights from the reporting coming out of MLCs. Comparing that with other income streams will be instructive in revealing gaps in income or opportunities. The exciting thing in all this is that income will be paid quicker, more accurately and, for those intrepid enough to do it themselves, at source without deductions.

So, let’s return to the hypothetical questions of earlier: “if that’s all you do, why haven’t you worked out a standard way of delivering repertoire, a standard way of receiving royalties, a standard way of understanding how repertoire is performing? Why does it all take so long?!” It turns out that all of these questions are being addressed. There is much still to do, but the vital thing for the WIN community is that no one gets left behind.