Leftbrain launches Royalty Recovery Program™ to help musicians collect unpaid royalties

Leftbrain, a business management and tech startup, launched the Royalty Recovery Program™ today to help musicians recover black box royalties.

“At the outset of the pandemic, many of our clients asked us to look into royalties they suspected they weren’t collecting on hit songs,” says Leftbrain co-founder and CEO Nicholas Judd.

The company responded by developing technology to identify and correct errors in the metadata to recover missing royalties. In a brief test run of the program, Leftbrain recovered more than $500,000 in unpaid royalties for a small group of clients.

“My team at Leftbrain taught me about metadata and the real possibility of finding missing royalties in my existing catalog,” says Doja Cat. “I had them perform a metadata audit to see what they could find. It was a good decision. They found a lot.”

Leftbrain uncovered 39 metadata errors in Doja Cat’s catalog and recovered $200,000 in unpaid royalties.

“My team at Leftbrain taught me about metadata and the real possibility of finding missing royalties in my existing catalog. I had them perform a metadata audit to see what they could find. It was a good decision. They found a lot.” Doja Cat

Leftbrain discovered that on average 45 percent of a musician’s catalog has metadata that is either incorrect or improperly registered. That means music creators lose out on hundreds of millions of dollars every year in unpaid royalties. And after a fewyears, these black box royalties are lost forever.

“What we are doing has the potential to solve one of the largest, lingering problems that has plagued the music industry for decades,” Judd says. “Our program is less expensive and more comprehensive than a traditional royalty audit. Most importantly, it fixes the underlying problems at the source.”

“Our program is less expensive and more comprehensive than a traditional royalty audit. Most importantly, it fixes the underlying problems at the source.” Nicholas Judd, Leftbrain Co-founder, CEO

In addition to the technology it built, Leftbrain assembled a team of royalty experts with experience working for some of the leading music publishers and labels in the industry.

Leftbrain recovered $135,000 for electronic dance music producer Ookay after identifying 25 errors in his metadata.

“Without Leftbrain’s team of royalty experts and tech, I would have lost royalties in the six figures,” Ookay says. “Music creators should get paid what they’ve rightfully earned. Leftbrain makes that happen.”

“Without Leftbrain’s team of royalty experts and tech, I would have lost royalties in the six figures. Music creators should get paid what they’ve rightfully earned. Leftbrain makes that happen.” Ookay

“Our team is keen to address the inefficient ways music creators are paid by reconciling metadata across the royalty sources. If even one source has a discrepancy, music creators are leaving money on the table,” says Andrew Ullah, Manager, Royalty Audit and Services.

“As a music creator myself, I am driven to ensure all creators collect on their full value!”

The Royalty Recovery Program is available to both external clients and clients who use Leftbrain for business management.