Sounds Like Publishing is a leading provider of music publishing administration for music in advertising, working with global music production companies, composers and brands. We’ve been working with Sounds Like Publishing since September last year. We had a chat with Steve Joyce, their Managing Director, to see how they were getting on with Vericast.
How did you first hear about us?
I’d been hearing about BMAT for years. Before I was at Sounds Like, I ran another publishing company doing pretty much the same thing I do now on a smaller scale. I heard about you guys in, sort of, hallowed tones from the competitors [laughs].
When I set up my own company, we looked for serious ways to improve what we’re doing and give us more visibility, and BMAT’s name came up.
“As soon as we ran our first trial with BMAT we saw that we needed to switch immediately.”
We’d worked with a few other platforms before. With some, there’s no interface. We’re supposed to be uploading our audio for international monitoring, but we upload the MP3s and then that’s it, we can’t see what it’s picking up. We only hear about it from PRS or whoever.
We then used another platform for a few years which was good. We had some visibility, we could see it picking things up, but then as soon as we ran our first trial with BMAT we saw that we needed to switch immediately. The information we were seeing was so much more than we were ever used to! Quite surprising actually.
“They would say “Yes, it’s with BMAT – so it’s fine!”
Our Spanish sub publisher uses you for their stuff and they were always very confident about BMAT, and that everything that was being picked up. They would say “Yes it’s with BMAT – so it’s fine!”.
How does SoundsLikePublishing work with BMAT operationally? Which things do you use BMAT for?
So, we’ve got about 105 clients on our books, and they’re all writing music for ads which are being broadcast globally. Since we started using Vericast we’ve really tightened up our own processes. So before we’d obviously be registering titles with the various PROs as and when these commercials came in through our clients – we’re talking 30 or 40 per month.
“Since we started using Vericast we’ve really tightened up our own processes.”
We’re using it daily, collating everything to make sure you guys have got what you need, uploading at the end of the day, we’re bothering Luis every day because we’re not tech savvy and we need a lot of help and hand-holding [laughs].
My colleague Peter in Amsterdam is on it 24/7! He loves it, he’s very happy, it’s like a game for him “spot the advert”. It’s all good fun.
What does working with BMAT bring to your business?
We’re receiving all this new, extra information. With previous platforms, we’d check in once or twice a month, but now we’re logged into Vericast all day every day, picking everything up constantly, it’s fantastic!
When we first came on board we signed up for just a handful of territories, and within 24 hours we had doubled it, and I expect we’ll do that again fairly soon. Just because it was like, seeing the broadcast coming through and thinking, ehhhh I kind of wish we knew what was going on in America as well, that kind of thing.
“We’re logged into Vericast all day every day, constantly picking up all this new information, it’s fantastic!“
Obviously we’re tied to the only 38 territories in the world that pay out for advertising at the moment, so we wouldn’t be able to use all the other territories that BMAT offers at the moment, but certainly the major ones, we’ve got the US as the next one – so let’s see how good your sales guys are [laughs].
Which parts of Vericast do you find the most useful?
A bit of everything really. The detections are the most useful in the end result because that’s what results in the increased payments. Also being able to immediately see which territories our work is going out in.
“We can see it, we can play it, we can download the reports – it’s literally everything we need to go back to PRS with.“
We love the sheer visibility of everything and the level of granular detail – we can see it, we can play it, we can download the reports. It’s literally everything we need to go back to PRS with.
We know PRS accepts your data, and we’re really confident it’s going to make things a lot easier and hopefully cut down a lot of the manual excel work that I’m doing.
“It’s helped us tighten up interactions with our clients too.“
It’s very labour intensive making sure cue-sheets are accurate. Literally sending 150 emails to PRS a day to get something matched up. It’s too soon now, but on the 1st of April will be the day that we’re able to correlate whole periods rather than what we do now. Looking forward to that, it’s going to be really interesting moving forward. It’s helped us tighten up interactions with our clients too.
What changes have you seen within your business since working with us?
It’s still early stages as we’re just crossing over the broadcast period, but it’s really intriguing picking out patterns. I was looking at one of our tracks which is a little ident for an insurance company, and that’s for a fairly new client of ours. Again, this is really really useful for us to be able to share BMAT information with new clients when they’re still testing the water. Most of them frankly don’t understand this side of the business and we exist because composers and music houses shouldn’t have to, they’ve got music to write. We’ll take on the back end.
“It’s really useful for us to be able to share Vericast information with new clients.“
But, seeing for example this Royal London track, I’ve looked at the cue-sheets for PRS, and they’ve got about 450 versions of this ad which is about right. But we’re looking at maybe 9000 broadcasts that this is coming up with since January 2020. But, at the beginning of September we started running Vericast for trial and there are already 7000 broadcasts that BMAT are coming up with just for the last 3 months of the year, so yeah it’ll be very interesting to see a full 6 or 12 month period to see how this compares.
“We’d immediately see other platforms pick up 600 broadcasts and BMAT would pick up 1500.
So it’s immediately obvious.“
Certainly, even when we were just deciding to come onboard and trialling with BMAT, we’d immediately see that other platforms would pick up 600 broadcasts or something and BMAT would pick up 1500. So it’s immediately obvious.
We’re very happy, from a staff point of view too, some platforms can have very limited help in my experience. Now with BMAT we have faces and names and people we like, who are also so quick to get stuff dealt with whenever we have issues from our side. It’s like, this is great, why has this taken us 6 years?!
Find out more about how Vericast is giving publishers around the world higher visibility of their music so they can cash in on every usage.
Written by Kelly, Head of Content Strategy
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