Kobalt Unlocks New Levels of Transparency for Songwriters and Rightsholders

14 February 2024 - Press release

Kobalt, the most trusted name in music and leading independent music publisher, has announced the release of its next-generation Client Portal. Bringing unprecedented levels of accuracy, transparency and insight, the new product pushes the Kobalt client experience to new levels. 

In addition to real-time royalty payments, song-specific performance insights, and live sync updates, the new Kobalt Portal sees the unveiling of an industry first across the royalty processing journey. The Kobalt ‘Collection Gap’ highlights the delay between the usage of a song and the receipt of associated royalties, empowering creators to analyze and respond to their own data like never before.  

“At the core of Kobalt, we believe that knowledge and transparency are true power in the music industry,” said Kobalt CEO Laurent Hubert. “No music company works harder than Kobalt to educate and empower clients so they can be armed with information to make the best decisions for their business. The royalty collection flow is a big blindspot for songwriters and rightsholders, and unlocking this data has the potential for material impact, from a rising songwriter to the biggest acts in the world. We will continue to push new boundaries to ensure creators have unparalleled access to their data and continuously empower them.”  

These developments in the Kobalt experience go a long way to further enabling songwriters and rights holders to set more informed expectations, plan more accurately, and gain confidence in a traditionally opaque industry. But thanks to consolidating its digital touchpoints into one responsive experience, Kobalt already has a roadmap of new features and improvements to empower creators further and deliver more money faster. 

The new Client Portal demonstrates Kobalt’s continued commitment to technological innovation and illustrates both the company’s deep understanding of its clients’ needs and their world-class administrative and creative capabilities. These new features include: 

• The “Collection Gap” - From usage to balance, the "Collection Gap" lets clients track how long any royalty payment has taken to reach them. 

• Daily payment feed - A real-time breakdown of all payments collected and processed by source, landing in the portal on a daily basis. 

• Catalog home - A trusted home for client creation and a source of truth for their life's work.

• Song-specific insights - Detailed performance snapshots across all sources, territories and timeframes. In-depth insight on the assets that matter most. 

Said Kobalt Chief Technology Officer Nuno Guerreiro, “This breakthrough achievement has not been triangulated and visualized before across the billions of transactions that happen in the music ecosystem. We are proud to have launched an entirely new experience, enhanced by feedback from creators throughout the build, which demonstrates how innovation is at Kobalt’s core and has created an even deeper level of transparency for our clients. The new Kobalt Portal also establishes the bedrock for several innovative features and services that we have planned for the months to come. Stay tuned!” 

Added Senior Product Manager Adam Foster, “The Portal is a hallmark of the Kobalt brand and is the gold standard in Music Publisher technology. This latest version showcases incredible technological innovations and pushes our commitment to transparency even further." 

To learn more about the Kobalt Portal, please visit https://www.kobaltmusic.com/creator-portal/