Founder of Chordal
Web: chordal.com
Music licensees often face this problem: a song or a piece of music has multiple rightsholders, and all of them have to give their approval before the music can be licensed. This can make music clearance a cumbersome, costly and/or completely prohibitive process for licensees, as well as prevent an artist’s music from reaching a broader audience. To address this common issue, music licensing platform Chordal created InstantClear, a technology designed to streamline the licensing process by getting music licenses approved in advance so licensees can tap into a wealth of music they otherwise would not be able to access.
“Too often we hear, ‘Well, we’d like to license that song, but we’d have to find all the rightsholders and get them on board, so it’ll never happen,’” says Chordal founder Grayson Sanders. “InstantClear builds upon Chordal’s existing technology that allows different song owners to be hands-on with how they control their shares of music rights. Our format kind of creates a happy medium between giving the rightsholders agency and licensees a pathway forward.”
InstantClear doesn’t have set pricing models for songs for several reasons, including giving rightsholders more power. “In some areas of the music business, it makes sense to have unification around rates, but there is a lot more nuance to sync licensing,” Sanders says.
Sanders sees a lot of potential for growth on the horizon for music rightsholders, particularly in the social/video game space, where music integration is expanding and creating unprecedented opportunities for fans to discover and engage with music. “There are a lot of possibilities for platforms to take advantage of user data to integrate music in more personalized ways, where it’s a central part of the user experience, and the user is empowered to listen to the music they want to hear.”
