Fair, Fast, and Transparent: Re-engineering Media Royalty Distribution with Blockchain
Stop losing revenue to opaque accounting and slow payment cycles.
Our blockchain solutions automate royalty splits and provide an immutable, real-time source of truth for every creator, publisher, and stakeholder.
The Core Problem
Why Royalty Management is Broken
The media industry runs on creativity, but its financial backbone—royalty distribution—is often stuck in the past. Complex contracts, multiple intermediaries, and a lack of shared data create a system plagued by inefficiency, delays, and mistrust.
The Old Way: A Black Box
- Opaque & Slow: Payments trickle through layers of intermediaries, each taking a cut and adding delays. It can take months or even years for creators to get paid.
- Prone to Errors & Disputes: Manual data entry and siloed accounting systems lead to costly errors, endless audits, and legal disputes over who owns what and who is owed what.
- High Administrative Overhead: Companies spend a fortune on staff, software, and legal fees just to manage the complex web of rights and payments.
- Lack of Trust: Creators often feel powerless and skeptical, unsure if they are receiving their fair share for the use of their intellectual property.
The Blockchain Solution: A Clear Ledger
- Transparent & Instant: Smart contracts automatically execute payments the moment usage is reported. All transactions are recorded on an immutable, shared ledger visible to all authorized parties.
- Single Source of Truth: Blockchain provides an undisputed record of ownership, usage rights, and royalty splits, drastically reducing disputes and the need for reconciliation.
- Automated & Efficient: By automating calculations and distributions, blockchain cuts administrative costs, eliminates human error, and frees up resources.
- Empowered Stakeholders: Creators, publishers, and distributors gain real-time visibility into earnings, fostering a new era of trust and collaboration.
Why Partner With Errna?
Your Bridge to Transparent Royalty Management
Dual-Domain Expertise
We are not just blockchain developers; we are technologists with deep experience in the media and entertainment sectors. We understand the nuances of rights management, licensing, and the creative value chain.
Seamless API-First Integration
Our solutions are designed to augment, not replace. We build robust APIs to connect the blockchain ledger with your existing Digital Asset Management (DAM), accounting, and ERP systems for a smooth transition.
Enterprise-Grade Security
Leveraging our CMMI Level 5 and ISO 27001 certified processes, we build secure, permissioned blockchain networks that protect your sensitive IP data while ensuring transactional integrity.
Scalable & Future-Proof Architecture
We build for tomorrow's media landscape. Our solutions are scalable to handle millions of micro-transactions and adaptable for future use cases like IP tokenization and fractional ownership.
Focus on Tangible ROI
We move beyond the hype to deliver real business value. Our process starts with identifying key pain points to ensure your blockchain investment translates directly into reduced overhead, faster payments, and fewer disputes.
Proven Global Delivery
With over 20 years in business and 3000+ successful projects, our 1000+ in-house experts have a track record of delivering complex technology solutions for clients from startups to Fortune 500 companies.
Our Capabilities
End-to-End Royalty Distribution Solutions
We provide a comprehensive suite of services to design, build, and deploy a blockchain-powered royalty management ecosystem tailored to your specific needs.
Smart Contract Development for Royalty Splits
We translate your complex legal agreements into self-executing smart contracts. These digital contracts automatically enforce royalty rules and distribute payments instantly and accurately when predefined conditions are met (e.g., a song is streamed, an image is downloaded).
- Automated Logic: Encode complex splits, waterfalls, and payment terms directly into the contract.
- Tamper-Proof Execution: Once deployed, the contract's logic cannot be altered, ensuring all parties are treated fairly according to the original agreement.
- Reduced Administration: Eliminates the need for manual calculation and payment processing, cutting overhead significantly.
Custom Royalty Management dApp
We build intuitive, web-based decentralized applications (dApps) that provide a secure portal for all stakeholders. Creators, publishers, and administrators can log in to view contracts, track usage, and see real-time earnings statements.
- Role-Based Access: Secure, permissioned access ensures stakeholders only see the data relevant to them.
- Transparent Reporting: Provide creators with an unprecedented, real-time view of how their IP is performing and earning.
- IP Registration: A user-friendly interface for registering new works and defining ownership and royalty splits on the blockchain.
IP Rights & Royalty Stream Tokenization
Transform intellectual property rights or future royalty streams into tradable digital assets (NFTs or security tokens). This opens up new avenues for creators to raise capital and for investors to participate in the success of creative works.
- New Liquidity Models: Allow creators to sell fractional ownership of their future royalties to fans and investors.
- Simplified Rights Trading: Create a secondary market for trading IP rights with ownership transfer recorded securely on the blockchain.
- Enhanced Fan Engagement: Build deeper connections by allowing fans to own a "share" of their favorite artist's work.
Real-time Analytics & Reporting Dashboard
Leverage the transparent data on the blockchain to generate powerful insights. Our custom dashboards provide a clear, visual representation of IP performance, revenue streams, and payment distributions across your entire catalog.
- Granular Usage Data: Track every stream, download, or license in real-time.
- Financial Forecasting: Use immutable historical data to more accurately project future earnings.
- Compliance & Audit Trails: Generate instant, verifiable reports for accounting, legal, and compliance purposes.
Legacy System & Oracle Integration
A blockchain solution must communicate with the outside world. We specialize in building secure bridges (oracles) that feed external data—like streaming numbers from platforms or sales data from retailers—into your smart contracts to trigger payments.
- Connect to Any Data Source: Integrate with streaming platforms, PROs (Performing Rights Organizations), and internal sales systems.
- Secure Data Feeds: Ensure the data feeding your smart contracts is reliable and tamper-resistant.
- Workflow Continuity: Connect the blockchain to your existing financial and asset management software for seamless operations.
Proven Success
Real-World Impact of Blockchain in Media
Challenge: Overcoming Royalty Payout Hell
The client was drowning in spreadsheets. Royalty calculations were performed quarterly, took weeks to complete, and were prone to errors, leading to frequent disputes with songwriters and other publishers.
Key Challenges:
- Massive administrative burden from manual data reconciliation.
- Delayed payments causing friction with creative partners.
- Lack of a single, trusted source for song ownership data.
- Difficulty tracking and collecting royalties from hundreds of global sources.
Our Solution:
We deployed a permissioned blockchain solution built on Hyperledger Fabric. We created smart contracts that mirrored their existing publishing agreements and developed a dApp for stakeholders to view their catalog and statements.
- Digitized their entire catalog, creating a single, immutable record of song ownership and splits.
- Developed smart contracts to automatically calculate and distribute royalties based on usage data from major streaming platforms.
- Built a secure dashboard for songwriters to track their earnings in near real-time.
- Integrated the system with their existing accounting software via a custom API.
Challenge: Simplifying Complex Profit Participation
The studio's "distribution waterfall" was a legal and accounting nightmare. Revenue from various distribution channels had to be allocated to different stakeholders at different times, a process that was opaque and difficult to audit.
Key Challenges:
- Lack of transparency for investors and creative participants.
- High legal and accounting costs to manage and verify payouts.
- Potential for disputes over the interpretation of participation agreements.
- Difficulty attracting new investors due to the perceived financial complexity.
Our Solution:
We developed a solution on an Ethereum-based consortium chain, creating a unique smart contract for each film project. This contract perfectly replicated the film's legal distribution waterfall agreement.
- Automated the entire profit distribution process, from distributor payments to individual participants.
- Created a secure portal for investors and participants to view the film's revenue and see exactly how profits were being distributed.
- Tokenized profit participation shares, creating a potential pathway for future liquidity.
- Provided an immutable audit trail for all financial transactions related to the film.
Challenge: The Economics of Micropayments
The client's business model involved paying tiny royalties for each image download. Traditional banking fees made these micropayments economically unviable, forcing them to bundle payments and pay out infrequently.
Key Challenges:
- High transaction fees eating into profits and artist earnings.
- Delayed payments frustrating the contributor community.
- Complex system needed to track and aggregate millions of individual licenses.
- Difficulty providing contributors with transparent, real-time sales data.
Our Solution:
We implemented a Layer 2 scaling solution to handle high-volume, low-cost transactions. A custom dApp allowed contributors to track their sales and withdraw their earnings on-demand.
- Created a system for processing thousands of royalty micropayments per second.
- Drastically reduced transaction costs by over 99% compared to traditional payment rails.
- Developed a contributor dashboard showing real-time sales and an immutable history of every license sold.
- Enabled on-demand withdrawals, giving contributors instant access to their funds.
Tools & Technologies
Building on a Foundation of Excellence
We use a curated stack of proven, enterprise-ready blockchain platforms, smart contract languages, and development tools to build robust and scalable solutions.
What Our Clients Say
Trusted by Innovators in Media & Tech
"Errna didn't just sell us a piece of technology; they delivered a full-fledged business solution. Their understanding of music rights was as deep as their blockchain expertise. The transition was smoother than we ever imagined."
"The smart contract they developed for our film's profit participation is ironclad. It has eliminated ambiguity and built a new level of trust with our investors. Their team was professional, responsive, and brilliant."
"We had a massive scaling problem with micropayments. Errna's team architected a Layer 2 solution that was both elegant and incredibly effective. They solved a core business challenge that was holding back our growth."
"As a game development studio, tracking royalties from multiple app stores and platforms was a nightmare. The unified dashboard Errna built gives us a single source of truth. It's saved us countless hours in accounting."
"Their commitment to security and process maturity was evident from day one. The CMMI 5 and ISO certifications weren't just badges; they were reflected in the quality and reliability of the final product."
"We needed to integrate the new blockchain ledger with our legacy SAP system. I was skeptical, but Errna's integration team handled it flawlessly. The data flows seamlessly between the two systems."
Common Questions
Frequently Asked Questions
The cost varies significantly based on complexity. A Proof-of-Concept (PoC) to validate the idea can start in the range of a typical software project. A full-scale enterprise implementation is a more significant investment. We work with you to define a phased approach that aligns with your budget and delivers ROI at every stage, starting with a clear feasibility study.
For enterprise royalty management, we typically recommend and build on permissioned or private blockchain frameworks like Hyperledger Fabric or consortium chains. Unlike public blockchains (e.g., Bitcoin, public Ethereum), these offer greater privacy, control, and higher transaction speeds suitable for business operations. We select the best platform based on your specific needs for security, scalability, and governance.
This is a critical step managed by "oracles." An oracle is a secure service that acts as a bridge, fetching verified, real-world data (like streaming counts from Spotify's API) and feeding it to the smart contracts on the blockchain. We build and integrate robust oracles to ensure the data triggering your royalty payments is accurate and reliable.
While a deployed smart contract is immutable by design to ensure trust, we build upgradeable contract systems. This allows for the deployment of a new, updated version of the contract to reflect new agreement terms, while the history of the old contract remains preserved on the blockchain. This process is governed by rules agreed upon by the network participants.
A pilot or Proof-of-Concept can often be completed in 8-12 weeks. A full production rollout is a multi-phase process that can take 6-12 months, depending on the number of integrations required, the complexity of the royalty structures, and the amount of historical data to be migrated. We provide a detailed project roadmap after our initial discovery phase.
Ready to Fix Royalties for Good?
Let's talk about how blockchain can bring transparency, speed, and efficiency to your royalty operations. Schedule a no-obligation consultation with our experts to explore a tailored solution for your business.
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