February 1, 2022 (New York, London, Amsterdam) – Verifi Media, a global leader in modern media rights data management services, has launched the Verifi Rights Data Alliance (VRDA), which will drastically streamline information collaboration for music catalogs throughout the digital value chain while allowing each entity to maintain its own proprietary data source.

Four enterprise companies representing the full stack of music delivery from labels, to publishers, to PROs, to DSPs have been confirmed as inaugural VRDA members — major music company Warner Music Group (WMG), Spanish rights management entity Unison, digital service provider (DSP) Deezer, and music distributor FUGA, on behalf of its B2B clients who have chosen to opt in. Members of VRDA are committed to building an orchestrated approach to data sharing that will maintain the integrity of each contributor’s own information, while granting VRDA members the permissioned ability to collaborate and easily update one another on ownership information.

As part of the VRDA, inaugural members Warner Music Group, Unison, and Deezer are launching an initiative that will enable data and change management as well as collaboration across the digital value chain by building a two-way data flow to and from DSPs and owners. The initiative also facilitates the delivery and ongoing maintenance of better music rights data directly to DSPs and rights management entities or societies. Meanwhile, FUGA already went live with Verifi for ingestion of its clients’ data into the Verifi platform. 

Verifi’s engine “verifies” data via normalization, enhancement, and scoring. Verifi also provides ISRC and ISWC matching services and works with members to create modules to greatly simplify and improve the accuracy of tasks such as catalog transfer and ingestion, benefitting copyright owners as well as artists and songwriters. In addition, Verifi’s public data set will allow anyone to easily see who owns and represents particular songs, improving rights data transparency without sacrificing control of sensitive or proprietary information, such as splits.

“Launching VRDA is a huge step forward in our mission to allow data in the music business to travel at the speed of digital without requiring anyone to give up their proprietary information,” said Ken Umezaki, Co-Founder and CEO of Verifi Media. “This unprecedented global alliance across the recorded music industry verticals enables each members’ data to be accessible yet separate, speaking to each other across different standards and eliminating bad data, missed payments for rights-holders, and administrative headaches for labels, publishers, DSPs, PROs, and distributors.”

“We’re excited to be one of the first companies to join VRDA,” said Kathleen Strouse, Senior Vice President, Head of Global Data Management and Strategy at Warner Music Group. “Verifi has created a one-of-a-kind initiative that will allow us to ensure our data is correct throughout the digital value chain, powering innovation.”

“Deezer is pleased to join VRDA. This will be the next milestone in our mission to constantly improve the accuracy of our payments to every artist, songwriter and rights-holder who uses Deezer to share their music with the world,” said Ludovic Pouilly, Deezer SVP Institutional & Music Industry Relations. “We take data quality extremely seriously and it's great to see that companies like Verifi and other members of VRDA share our views on this critical topic. This partnership will also help us improve the quality of our metadata, which will help us continue to improve the music experience on Deezer for our users.”

“We’ve been partnering with Verifi to facilitate for participating clients multi-party communication and smart matching of recordings to publishing,” said FUGA CEO, Pieter van Rijn. “As a distributor, unlocking even more value for FUGA clients is our goal; Verifi enables us to augment clients’ metadata with works data more efficiently and at scale. Strong interest from our client base indicates that VRDA will be extremely valuable in that regard.”

“As our name states, Unison understands the importance of many voices coming together to form a greater whole — that’s why we joined VRDA,” said Jordi Puy, Unison CEO. “Now we know we can collaborate with our fellow VRDA members to make sure all of our artists’ data is fully up-to-date on all services.”

Companies that would like to join Verifi’s multi-party data consortium can contact info@verifi.media. For more information on Verifi, visit www.verifi.media.

About Verifi Media

With offices in London, New York, and Amsterdam, Verifi Media is a global leader in modern media rights data management services focused on empowering media creators through digital data innovation. Using modern tools like cloud computing and artificial intelligence, Verifi revolutionizes how media ownership and meta data is enhanced, corrected, shared and tracked across the supply chain, resulting in significantly better business decisions while enabling creators to be paid properly for their work. For more information, visit www.verifi.media.

Media Contacts

Laurie Jakobsen, Jaybird Communications — laurie@jaybirdcom.com, 646.484.6764

Bill Greenwood, Jaybird Communications — bill@jaybirdcom.com, 609.221.2374