KUVO, DJ Monitor & NTIA: Teaming Up for Fair Club Royalty Reporting
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Electronic music producers are notoriously underpaid for club plays. AlphaTheta’s KUVO powered by DJ Monitor has partnered with the UK’s NTIA to help get a royalty reporting system in place in clubs across Britain.
KUVO, DJ Monitor & NTIA
When a band performs a cover of a song, the rights holder generally receives some royalties. It’s a complicated system that deserves its own article but essentially, music venues pay a yearly fee for a live-performance license. The situation for DJs and clubs, however, has up to now been very different.
AlphaTheta brand KUVO powered by song recognition outfit DJ Monitor has partnered with the UK’s NTIA (Night Time Industries Association) to try and get nightclubs on board with the initiative and increase royalty payments to producers.
Bringing Transparency to the Night Time Music Industry
KUVO is an app made by AlphaTheta (Pioneer DJ). It sits inside DJ gear and – powered by an algorithm from DJ Monitor – recognizes played songs. It creates data and sends it to collection agencies who can then make payments to the rights holders. It also generates information on track play numbers for venues.
It doesn’t record information about the DJs themselves, however. As the KUVO site clarifies, “no playlists are publicized, and no details of which DJ played which tracks are captured”.
KUVO Partnering with NTIA
NTIA is an organization that champions the club-based music industry in the UK. The new initiative will “develop stronger relationships between music rights organisations, venues, DJs and creators across the country, with a focus on building towards a more transparent and fair music royalty ecosystem within the UK”, the group said in an announcement.
“The roll out of this cutting edge technology in the UK will go a long way to developing stronger, more tangible insights into the music being played within businesses across the UK”, said Michael Kill, the CEO of NTIA.
KUVO works with not only AlphaTheta/Pioneer DJ technology but any manufacturer’s gear. Electronic music producers have long been underpaid when it comes to performances of their tracks. As a producer of electronic music myself, I welcome this effort. Hopefully, it becomes more widespread.
Correction: an earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that KUVO worked only with Pioneer DJ/AlphaTheta gear. It works with any manufacturer. We regret the error.
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One response to “KUVO, DJ Monitor & NTIA: Teaming Up for Fair Club Royalty Reporting”
Hmmm. A one-time club promoting team member, can remember the problems of royalties coming up amongst club owners (not usually the promoter). It’s a tricky one, because you can kill playlist innovation with charging royalties per track. Sasha, when he started out, as an example, would play naff pop tunes into modern dance grooves, very difficult to do well, always a show-off, old Alex! But with royalty per track, you could kill such skills and entertainment, as DJs simply mix the bare number of tracks for the lowest cost in royalties. We suspect that royalty per track will further downgrade the big clubs into pop discos, and will make DJs make their own stuff instead for ‘perimeter’ clubs. In short, you’ll get a very drab mainstream club scene, but a much livelier offbeat scene. Be careful what you wish for! 😎