DDEX is the not-for-profit body that sets the formats music companies use to exchange data, from details of new releases to sales reports.
The org’s 150+ members include Spotify, Apple, Amazon, and all three major music companies, as well as major companies from every sector of the industry.
Next month, on November 19, DDEX hosts its MusicTech 20/20 Summit in Toronto, presented by Meta. The event arrives in DDEX’s 20th anniversary year.
One of the key topics discussed at the event will be data identifiers – with a panel featuring Chris Horton, EVP, Strategic Technology at Universal Music Group, and Sylvain Piat, Director of Business and Technology at CISAC, the organization behind the ISWC system.
Ahead of the event, MBW caught up with Mark Isherwood, who has headed DDEX’s Secretariat since the organization was formed in 2006 – and has more than 40 years of professional involvement in music rights and data.
“It is very clear that the single biggest problem that remains unsolved is having available, to everyone, authoritative links between musical works (ISWCs) and sound recordings (ISRCs).”
Mark Isherwood
Expressing his personal view on the data identifier issue, Isherwood suggested that the biggest unsolved problem in music data remains the lack of authoritative, industry-wide links between songs and recordings.
He noted that many databases inside music companies hold “extensive numbers of links” between song ID codes (ISWC) and recording ID codes (ISRC).
But he said these are “generally used by such companies as a unique selling point, rather than something that might have common value and benefit.”
“If you ask most people working in operations within the music industry value chain, it is very clear that the single biggest problem that remains unsolved is having available, to everyone, authoritative links between musical works (ISWCs) and sound recordings (ISRCs),” he said.
“If this issue could be solved, a very significant amount of grunt work that everyone needs to undertake at the moment on a daily basis would be unnecessary and provide considerable cost and efficiency benefits,” added Isherwood.
DDEX has its own standard, BWARM, for sending data on large numbers of songs in bulk, including links to the recordings that use them.
Asked what the industry’s data systems could make possible over the next decade, Isherwood said: “The ultimate objective for the industry has to be the management of operations, simply through the use of unique identifiers.
“At the moment, very significant amounts of data have to be exchanged because identifier data almost always has to be accompanied by corroborating data.
“Over the next ten years the industry needs to work to phase out the need to exchange anything other than identifiers. The identifiers would be communicated in significantly smaller messages, just containing identifiers.
“Recipients will then draw down the data they need using the identifiers as pointers to data that is stored elsewhere, rather than there needing to be multiple huge message exchanges of metadata, much of which at the moment is duplicative.”
The MusicTech 20/20 summit will be opened with an address from DDEX’s Board Chair, Dan Simpson, who is also Meta’s Head of Music Operations.
The keynote speaker at the event is Phil Wiser, most recently Chief Technology Officer of Paramount. According to DDEX, Wiser was part of the Sony team involved in the deal to launch iTunes.
Tickets for the summit, available through DDEX’s event page, cost USD $650 until November 1 and $770 after that.
Asked what the realistic worst case would be if the industry’s data systems fail to keep up with AI, Isherwood said: “The important word in that question is ‘realistic.’ Could a situation arise where the whole system gets so gummed up that nobody gets paid? No, definitely not.
“But, somewhere along the spectrum from where we are to that situation arising, it may be possible. How far along is dependent on how quickly the industry can adapt.
“Our experiences at DDEX are that industry players are very much on top of these issues and already ready to adapt. We have done a considerable amount of work on solving the operational issues thrown up by AI and some of this is already beginning to emerge into the operational ecosystem.”
“As with every walk of life, resources are finite. That said, there is nothing fundamental about the industry’s approach that needs to be changed.”
Mark Isherwood
On whether today’s standards, which depends on agreement between many companies, can keep up with the pace of change ahead of the music biz, Isherwood added: “It is true that standards development can take time. However, DDEX prides itself on being able to move pretty quickly in the ever-changing landscape.
“Nevertheless, there is always a lag between the completion of standards and their deployment across the industry. DDEX works in a way that seeks to minimise this lag by ensuring that there are member companies ready to implement a standard before it is published.
“Of course, DDEX and the industry as a whole could do more and do it better, but, as with every walk of life, resources are finite. That said, there is nothing fundamental about the industry’s approach that needs to be changed.”
Looking back at DDEX’s origins, Isherwood added: “The main catalyst for the creation of DDEX was the infrastructure that had been created for the iTunes Store when launched in 2003. There were a lot of individual company systems all created in different ways, with different architectures and data models.
“In many instances, data was being communicated using [Excel] spreadsheets. Everything was done on a proprietary basis. Five labels, three musical work CMOs and three technology companies therefore came together to figure out how data communication could be made easier.
“From these discussions, which [began] mid-2005, DDEX was launched in May 2006. Since then, DDEX has grown to over 150 members representing every sector of the music industry value chain, including many more musical work CMOs, music publishers, producer/performer CMOs, distributors, technology service provide[r]s, music recognition technology companies and companies providing services to creators for the collection of metadata.”Music Business Worldwide
