Streamlining Royalty Payments with Exactuals

Solving royalty complexity in the music industry

Music industry payments have never been more complex than they are today. Record labels, publishers and distributors must track multiple income streams and platforms, including physical and digital album sales, traditional radio plays, royalties from dozens of streaming platforms and rights for TV and film use.

A single song may earn income from dozens of sources in multiple countries and can become complex to track.

Many music industry companies leverage legacy systems to track revenues, but these can be inefficient and costly to maintain. Fortunately, City National Bank offers an alternative in automated end-to-end solutions that administer and process royalty payments. All of these services are backed by bank-level security and rigor, offering a comprehensive solution for every stage in the royalty payment process.

Bringing royalty payments into the digital age

Payments in the music industry present unique challenges — and solving them requires a nuanced understanding of these complex issues. City National Bank has a long history and deep expertise in serving music industry clients, whether it be lending against a bundle of rights generated by music IP (intellectual property) or giving back to the music community through philanthropic initiatives. City National is focused on building relationships and being a collaborative resource to solve industry pain points. With Exactuals, a payments company and wholly owned subsidiary of City National Bank, we have bolstered our history and experience banking for the entertainment industry with powerful, modern tech solutions to streamline the royalty payment process. Exactuals, the leading platform for royalties, rights and calculations, is part of a larger City National entertainment ecosystem with other acquired fintech solutions of AgilLink and FilmTrack.

Clients no longer have to dedicate substantial resources and costs to track, manage, distribute and process royalty payments. Exactuals, a cloud-based SaaS solution, speeds up your royalty administration workflow, processing high volumes of payments with transparency and accessibility.

City National Bank’s institutional scale, security and risk management, together with Exactuals’ industry leading product suite, presents the music industry with capabilities that cover publishers, distributors, labels and other music industry organizations at every stage of the royalty management and payments process.

SR1 — A new way to manage royalties

Calculating royalties can be complex and time-consuming, as companies must account for multiple income sources and multiple revenue recipients, including artists, songwriters, publishing companies and labels. Through Exactuals, you can leverage SR1, a digitally native royalty calculation suite, streamlining all aspects of royalty management, including mechanical licenses and reporting, expense processing, royalty statement generation, deal management, sales and income processing, master licensing and invoicing and neighboring rights. All delivered with personalized service to manage complexity from legacy and current deal structures.

PaymentHub — transparent, accurate, seamless payments

Paying out royalties can also cause frustration, as it can require aggregating small payments for multiple recipients from many different sources. PaymentHub, Exactuals’ payments processing and reporting platform, offers seamless payment and analytics capabilities through a secure cloud-based platform. Through a company branded hub, music publishers, distributors and labels can securely register payees’ sensitive information, aggregate payment data and distribute payments through City National Bank.

A single song may earn income from dozens of sources in multiple countries, yet many music industry companies are still relying on processes that can make it hard for a company to scale, modernize and track information comprehensibly and cohesively. Even a small problem, like a missing or outdated metadata tag, can keep artists, labels and music publishers from receiving the income that’s due to them. Technology can help music companies keep up with an ever-changing, ever-more-complex industry to make sure payments are properly fulfilled.

For more information about City National and how the Exactuals suite can work for your business, contact us today.