New Year, New Features From OpenPlay to Benefit Music Companies
Designed from the start as a ‘different kind of enterprise software company,’ OpenPlay connects practices and methodologies from the startup ecosystem and applies them to the challenges faced by major, multi-national companies.
Founded in 2013 by music industry experts, OpenPlay is utilized to manage 3rd party music distribution businesses, as well as wholly-owned label groups.
The team has found great success bridging the gap between content creation, metadata management, assets, and delivery — helping organizations bring their people, process, and assets together in one place so they can stay productive and aligned from anywhere.
Headquartered in Santa Monica, CA, OpenPlay continues to power asset and workflow management for the world’s largest music companies.
As we settle in to 2024, we wanted to check with OpenPlay to see what the new year has on the schedule.
We caught up with Jonathan Bender, OpenPlay’s Chief Operating and Growth Officer, to discuss latest developments at the company.
There have been many notable features dropped into the OpenPlay CMS lately. Let’s focus on the marketing enhancements. What are some of the highlights?
Jonathan Bender: From the start, OpenPlay has been for everyone at music companies, and we’ve made sure to make it as useful for creatives as it is for production and rights management.
As part of that commitment, there are three functions we’ve added lately.
We recently added Tour Visibility to OpenPlay, and automated pulling in artist tour dates around the world in their dashboard. 2) We’ve made continual enhancements to our merchandise tools, where labels can configure and store all of their merchandise assets and data alongside releases. 3) We’ve added video playback and delivery, which may seem small, but now all videos can be played back within OpenPlay, removing the need to go to YouTube or other hosting services.
This is on top of being able to deliver those video assets anywhere they need to go.
Last year, OpenPlay launched its Direct Delivery service — designed for users to deliver their releases (audio or video) directly to any distributor or music service, at the click of a button. What’s the latest on the new feature since its debut?
Jonathan Bender: We’ve received a lot of positive feedback and interest in Direct Delivery since launch! It’s an ideal solution for labels who want to control their own deliveries, manage their own marketing and promotions, and save money in the process.
And labels no longer need to depend on distributors for DSP licenses — there are several options.
1) First, labels who are Merlin members can take advantage of Merlin’s licenses with OpenPlay simply handling the delivery. 2) But since not everyone can become a Merlin member, we’ve arranged for the use of third-party licenses for a 5% fee — a discounted rate that is unmatched in the industry.
This is achievable because OpenPlay delivers releases as perfect, fully validated DDEX files, and there’s no need to worry at all about any missing data or information that’s non-conformant to a DSP because OpenPlay covers all DSP style guides.
The rest is just a technical pass-through.
A 5% fee for use of these licenses, integrated with seamless delivery from OpenPlay’s professional content management system, is a game-changer, and it sets a new bar in the industry for data efficiency and low cost.
One of the chief tenets of OpenPlay’s business is that the music industry continues to operate with an outdated digital distribution model. OpenPlay Co-Founder Edward Ginis has written about this issue, offering up a look at how best to make the shift to a new model. As we move into 2024, what’s on tap for OpenPlay in the short-term, as it relates back to Edward’s ideas and opportunities for the future of digital distribution?
Jonathan Bender: Firstly, we’re continuing to advocate for doing away with the traditional “Distribution” definition. Distribution itself evokes trucks and warehouses, which don’t exist anymore — today you just need “digital transmission” and “marketing.”
The technical transmission of music to DSPs must be de-coupled from label services, and treated and priced completely separately from marketing, promotion, and playlisting.
These services are entirely different from one another and require unique expertise — technical (delivery) and creative (marketing). They shouldn’t be lumped together for one inflated fee!
Secondly, we continue to highlight our outrage at the “barriers to exit” that certain distributors exert on clients to prevent them from leaving — specifically making it difficult, or refusing outright, to return a label’s content to them after their contract has ended. We’ve encountered this problem at a disturbing rate, and in effect, a label’s content — their property — is being held hostage.
To combat this, we’ve proposed “The Pledge” in which distributors pledge to return any and all content back to labels in DDEX format at the end of any deal.
This can be done very simply by insisting on the addition of one single paragraph in any deal with a distributor — “at the end of this agreement, distributor will return to label all content and assets in the then-current version of DDEX.”
This has always been the case for labels who use OpenPlay. Your content and assets are always yours, available however and whenever you want it, and the entire industry should function with that very same belief. Every distributor should have a “download your complete catalog in DDEX” button, just like OpenPlay does.
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