January 14, 2021

Spanish Point Technologies wanted to help musicians earn fairer incomes for their properties by creating a solution that helps collective management organizations accurately invoice for music royalties when their works are used in a public space. The company worked with Microsoft and Databricks to build a big data and AI platform, based on Azure resources, which matches music performances to copyright holders at scale, processing hundreds of millions of transactions every month.

”Using our Matching Engine built on Azure resources, the organizations we work with are able to reduce their processing times from 48 hours to just five minutes. It’s created a big time-saving benefit.”

John Corley: Chief Technology Officer – Spanish Point Technologies

Technology has always been a big disruptor in the music industry, but it hasn’t always benefited music creators. With the fast rise of streaming services like Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Music, the value of individual plays has seen a rapid decline. As a result, music creators and publishers sometimes receive less for their works, and invoicing for royalties is a greater challenge for collective management organizations (CMOs) than ever before.

But Spanish Point Technologies, a Gold competency member of the Microsoft Partner Network, is working to change the industry. The software company builds solutions for CMOs in the music industry to help them accurately invoice for royalties and distribute payments fairly to artists and publishers. The company’s core solution, known as its Matching Engine, was built using Azure Databricks. It offers a faster way to match public performances of songs, song lyrics, scores, and other musical copyrights to the license holders, making it easier to identify who needs to be paid and who should pay them.

But building a solution that could keep up with the fast pace of streaming services was a major challenge, and it involved a completely new approach from the company’s original technology.

We take full advantage of the tiered storage in Data Lake Storage. After we’ve processed a data batch, it goes into low-cost storage on cool tiers. We still have access to it, and we can scale usage quickly, but we’re not paying for what we don’t use.

John Corley: Chief Technology Officer – Spanish Point Technologies

Find the full Success Story below!