Electronic music producers are notoriously underpaid for club plays. AlphaTheta’s KUVO along with DJ Monitor have 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 along with song recognition outfit DJ Monitor have 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 Alpha Theta (Pioneer DJ). It sits inside the company’s DJ gear and – along with 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
The 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 currently only works with AlphaTheta/Pioneer DJ technology. It would be great to see it – or other similar technology – rolled out into the DJ gear of other manufacturers. 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.
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