Rowe/AMI Entertainment Network

Rowe, now part of AMI Entertainment Network is the number one manufacturer of commercial internet jukeboxes. They hired Silver Lake to build a publisher’s clearance database and royalty reporting system for nearly 3 million songs.

Before

The music industry was drowning in data. The industry typically managed their enormous databases with common spreadsheets. Their processes, like creating and maintaining cross references between songs and publishers, were labor- and time-intensive. Data lived in many different spreadsheets, which also made reporting to publishers very complicated. The founders of ROWE had a better vision, and Silver Lake helped them get there.

After

First, Silver Lake worked with the firm’s attorneys and consultants to establish business rules and workflow. Then we created a FileMaker database of songs with the following capabilities:

• Cross-referencing between labels, publishers, writers, payees, mechanical licensing organizations (MLOs) and performance rights organizations (PROs)
• Tracking of ownership percentage, release status and research information
• Tracking of quarterly play information
• Seamless reporting to publishers of performance royalties and server fixation fees
• Alerting users if another version of an already researched song entered the database (a live version of Jumping Jack Flash, for instance).
• Additional work queues for the researchers
• Additional progress reports for management