December 2, 2022
In 2023–2024, Teosto will renew its business-critical basic systems, which handle the reporting of used music and the settlement of compensation for music creators and publishers. The innovation is implemented in a joint Nordic project and the Irish Spanish Point Technologies has been selected as its system supplier. The goal is to modernize and enhance systems to meet the current and future needs of music creators and publishers, customers who use music, and international partners.
For Teosto, this is the most significant project of the decade, which renews the technological framework for a large part of the core processes of rights management. The goal of the project is to modernize the current data systems for music usage reports, automate and improve the processing of reports, and streamline the accounting of compensations paid for music to authors and publishers.
Selected as supplier, Spanish Point is a well-known operator in the area of rights management and its clients include CISAC, the global umbrella organization of copyright organizations, as well as several other operators in the field. Spanish Point’s ‘Matching Engine’ solution is a modern, cloud-based platform with plenty of features for automating and improving the accuracy of music data.
“Renewing technological solutions is necessary so that we can meet today’s and future demands in the globalizing and digitized music rights market and maintain our position as one of the most progressive copyright organizations,” says Teosto CEO Risto Salminen.
“We are looking forward to working with Teosto. At the core of our service is the improvement of data quality and the automation of information and work processes, especially in collective management organizations,” says John Corley , CTO of Spanish Point Technologies .
The system reform has been prepared in cooperation with copyright organizations in different countries. In addition to Teosto, the music copyright organizations Koda from Denmark and Tono from Norway are involved in the project. The project will proceed in stages and will be fully completed in 2024.
At this stage, the agreement concerns the back office functions of accounting and reporting, but the acquired system also offers opportunities to develop new data and reporting functions for customers and rights holders in the future.
This is a continuation of Teosto’s extensive system reforms started in 2018, where automation has been developed and online services have been renewed piece by piece. In the near future, Teoston will also develop its systems related to work documentation.
“Together, the reforms enable more flexible further development and the provision of broader digital services to Teosto’s customer base,” says Salminen.
One key goal is also to improve data quality. Co-management organizations like Teosto receive huge amounts of reports about the music used from their customers, such as media companies, platforms and event organizers. The information in the reports must be correctly linked to the works databases, which contain information about the composers, lyricists, arrangers and publishers of the musical pieces. Spanish Point’s “matching engine” solution includes a wide range of functions intended for automation and data quality improvement, which make data processing more efficient.
“Millions of data lines pass through our systems every month. The Matching engine solution has helped several rights management organizations to solve data-related problems such as errors in music metadata. By improving the quality of the data, the transparency of accounting is ensured and, above all, that compensation can be paid to the right holders,” says Jouni Sirén, Teosto’s director of service production.
