What is the real value of entertainment rights management software? Here we review what this software should do, and look at 6 key benefits in how it helps you stay on top of all your digital assets.
The Background
Entertainment rights management plays a critical role in today’s digital world. The swift growth in digital media and internet connectivity on a global scale has created vast opportunities for content publishers and content distribution partners to monetize their creative media content.
According to a recent study by Grand View Research, global digital rights management in the media and entertainment industry is expected to reach $6.12 billion by 2028. Unfortunately, the increase in digital technologies, piracy, and the illegal distribution of content has negatively affected monetization opportunities for content owners and distributors. However, with the emergence of robust digital rights management systems (DRMS), the media and entertainment industry can simultaneously fight piracy and maximize the monetization of their assets.
What is Digital Rights Management?
Digital rights management (DRM) is intended to provide a framework and a set of policies, technologies, techniques, and tools for managing digital content's fair and appropriate uses. In addition, rights management software helps media companies manage the monetization and financial calculations associated with distributing their content.
The managing of digital rights provides numerous benefits for the entertainment industry:
- It educates software users about intellectual property and clarifies what they can and can’t do with specific content.
- It helps the owners of digital material protect their work's financial and creative investment, ensuring only licensees may distribute it according to complex legal agreements.
- It allows organizations to ensure that their content is distributed legally and appropriately while fully maximizing its revenue potential.
The most agile solutions integrate with critical business systems like accounting platforms, ERP, CRM, scheduling systems, and more. In addition, enhanced collaboration across functions helps reduce the time spent managing numerous systems.
Benefits of Digital Rights Management Software
Digital rights management software utilizes technology to control and manage access to copyrighted material. It helps businesses prevent the unauthorized redistribution of their digital assets and enables them to control how their content is organized, stored, shared, and retrieved. The benefits of using DRM software typically include the following:
1. Risk Management
Media companies in the entertainment industry expend numerous resources and time to develop a content library that they can monetize to generate revenue. Tracking entire libraries for all of the various rights and royalties for each project – as well as managing the risks involved in selling rights to third parties – is an extreme challenge that can be efficiently handled through the use of technology platforms designed specifically for that purpose.
2. Valuable Analytics
Rights management software solutions secure revenue streams to ensure that all payments are accurate and made according to the contractual dates. Data analytics provides a way to gain greater insight into where and when access was provided and to evaluate the overall performance of a business’s digital assets.
3. Reliable Accounting
Unfortunately, if you’re managing your digital rights with an Excel spreadsheet, the numbers can be changed so that they reconcile at the end of the quarter – a practice that will never conform to any accounting system. Digital rights management locks down the general ledger, ensuring proper gap accounting processes to provide an appropriate system of record that will have no problem passing an audit.
4. Maximized Distribution
In today’s modern global distribution environment, locating the source of a digital file can be challenging for media companies. DRM software enables businesses to establish and retain ownership of their work and clearly define and confirm the terms for digital content to help identify opportunities to monetize titles, bundle packages, and unexploited pockets of availability.
5. Streamlined Workflow
Collecting the information needed to manage your rights is rarely straightforward, and obtaining the necessary data from various systems and sources can be daunting. However, a rights management solution’s ability to integrate with financial platforms, scheduling systems, CRMs, aggregators, or other systems is critical to your company’s workflow. The right solution can push and pull data via APIs, automate the processing of accruals, maintain your rights inventory, make inception-to-date calculations, and much more.
6. Simplified Processes
Responsive rights management platforms simplify the processing of complex contracts, identify the rights granted for single or multiple contacts, and provide the ability to conduct business in numerous currencies and languages to offer businesses the flexibility and control they need.
Want to Learn More About Managing Rights?
We encourage you to check out our new ebook, Complex Film & Television Rights Management, to understand better the complexity involved in tracking valuable assets. Our ebook explains the evolution of rights management and explores modern-day solutions. Download to learn more!
