MUMBAI: Even as the global music licensing industry grows at a very rapid pace, unhealthy practices including the prolific practice of retitling songs has plagued the industry. Due to the practice, major problems are emerging with royalties in the music licensing landscape for artists and companies, according to the ‘State of the Music Licensing Industry: 2013’ report by The Music Licensing Directory.

The report states that there are millions missing in unreported artiste royalties, which is turn creates an unstable environment for recording artists, labels and publishers. It is based on detailed research into companies that license music from independent artists into film, television, games and advertising.

The Music Licensing Directory CEO and founder Winston Giles said, “We have analyzed over 1500 music licensing companies globally, allowing for an accurate assessment of the market place and providing valued insight for artists and the industry.”

Retitling of songs is done when a music licensing company re-registers a particular song under a different title with the Performing Rights Organization (PRO). This allows the company to control and earn a significant share of the royalties collected. As per the report, 40 per cent of music licensing companies retitle works for a share in royalties garnered from sync placements.

Giles added, “The practice of retitling is considered unhealthy for artists and for the music licensing industry. It can be very problematic, as one piece of music with many titles is confusing and can lead to multiple parties claiming ownership of the same work and ultimately artists not receiving royalties owed, if at all. Music supervisors are becoming more and more reluctant to accept retitled works, and some of the bigger studios and companies are now refusing to work with retitled works in their productions.”

Aiming to bring this practice to an end, a new technology titled ‘Digital Fingerprinting’ has been developed where two tracks cannot be digitally identical. The technique allows every individual piece of music to contain a unique ‘fingerprint’, so that no two tracks are digitally identical. Therefore, when music is broadcast it can be automatically detected and identified and its broadcast details can be recorded.

This new art is stated to be more effective and accurate than the physical cue sheets, which is the current method of reporting. Cue sheets are reported to be a highly ineffective and manual reporting process leading to large amount of inaccuracies and missing artist royalties. Digital fingerprinting will make things too difficult for companies that retitle tracks, as a unique piece of music can have only one unique ownership.

“Some royalty collection societies have begun the implementation of digital fingerprinting; however there remains no industry standard and the adaption away from archaic cue sheets to the new technology has been very slow. There are suggestions from within the industry from companies like Tunesat, who claim that up to 80 per cent of songs are not reported properly. When you consider that in the USA, the collection societies collect over two billion dollars annually - there is potentially a lot of money owed to artists going missing,” he stated.