ole Digital is a service that can be of significant benefit to songwriters and composers in monetizing digital content on YouTube, Google Play, Apple Music, Pandora, Amazon Prime, and Spotify, among other platforms.
“ole Digital was really started to ensure that all of our clients and stakeholders were getting monetization for content distributed digitally,” says Chris Giansante, ole Senior Vice President, Finance & Administration. “YouTube was the largest platform in which things were being exploited, but that was just one factor of why this division was started.”
While Giansante has always had a passion for music, it was his talent with numbers, that led him to a background in business, finance and accounting – which allows him to contribute to an industry he loves – for ole and ole Digital’s clients.
He currently leads ole’s Finance and Administration teams, which includes overseeing strategy for Conductor, the company’s proprietary data analytics and Business Intelligence system. Giansante’s role covers all of the company’s existing digital activities, including negotiation of direct deals with YouTube and other digital platforms. In many ways, the position is an extension of his work with ole since he joined the company seven years ago, in acquisitions.
“With the explosion of amounts of non-conforming data, Conductor essentially brings sanity to the madness.”
Having worked on several of ole’s major transactions (such as signing Timbaland, and acquiring the catalogues of Rush and Sony Pictures), Giansante embraced the opportunity, but says it was an eye-opener. “You’ve got a perception, before you get into the weeds, of how everything works.” He says. “But the details are incredibly nuanced and constantly evolving.”
The growth of YouTube was part of the impetus for ole Digital’s development, but it was the increasing exploitation of content through a myriad of digital platforms that prompted ole to service and monitor that developing market to ensure their clients received fair compensation for the use of the intellectual property controlled by ole.
The deployment of ole’s proprietary Conductor system, now enhanced to become a full-scale rights management platform, is key to that goal.
“Conductor is like the Rosetta Stone of data,” Giansante explains. “A tool that allows us to conform any data set to a defined standard, and then provides substantial, automated data analytics and insights related to it. We’re in an industry that unfortunately has no universal data standards. Even the so-called ‘standards’ are not standard. Conductor standardizes that ‘non-standard’ so our clients and stakeholders can benefit from meaningful data analytics and insights that maximize their royalties and the value of their intellectual property.
“With the evolution of the digital marketplace and the resultant explosion of amounts of non-conforming data, Conductor essentially brings sanity to the madness. It’s the system that forms the backbone of our rights management platform.”
As a full-scale multi-channel network that provides assistance to channel owners in a variety of areas, ole Digital offers a level of insight that’s greater than a company that only sees a portion of the data, says Giansante. Additionally, being a full-scale publishing administrator has allowed them to “marry up” their digital collections on YouTube and other services.
“As opposed to an organization that’s collecting income from one type of right – for example, a streaming mechanical, or mechanical reproduction right – Conductor allows ole Digital to drill into the insight of the data and identify where there’s gaps, or challenges, so we can get people paid more, and faster,” says Giansante.
The platform serves both emerging and established artists, songwriters and composers in a way that’s farther-reaching than most, says Giansante, and adds that it serves clients who range from other publishing entities, to TV and film companies, to individual songwriters and composers.
“We view ourselves as a partner to our clients, not just a service provider.”
Songwriters and composers interested in taking advantage of the service can contact the company through www.oledigital.com. Administration clients are then billed a 20-percent commission, but rights holders retain 100-percent copyright ownership and are still paid from their performing rights organization for the public performance of their compositions.
“One of the factors that sets ole Digital apart from competitors is its ability to collect on all content types,” says Giansante. While contracts with digital services are relatively standard, with YouTube specifically, “as a full-scale multi-channel network we do everything – compositions, sound recordings and full audiovisual content,” says Giansante. “There aren’t many partners that have that status.
“A major differentiator is our robust technological platform, Conductor,” he continues. “We’ve been able to conform all of the data that we get from all areas we operate as a rights management company into a single ecosystem. That ability, augmented by the system’s robust analytics, gives us greater insights, so that we’re able to ensure full and complete monetization for our clients.”
“Individuals should be able to engage with a team to help them create their own channels and strategize on how they can earn more views,” Giansante says. “We view ourselves as a partner to our clients, not just a service provider, and want to assist with every avenue of the value chain we can to help clients foster their careers and ensure greater monetization.”