Audiam opens its income-tracking tech to all clients

Digital rights agency Audiam has updated its client portal with the technology it uses to find unclaimed money for copyright owners. The change means that artists, songwriters, publishers, and labels can see reports on every version of their works across services, including covers that they may not have known about. The technology is called Layla, and it offers a granular view for tracking income.

“The Layla system sifts through mountains of data to help find all the recordings and YouTube videos of a song, tracks the uses, collects the money and identifies what is and is not being paid on,” Audiam CEO Jeff Price said. “The end result is more money going into the pockets of the songwriters and publishers.”

Over the past several years, Audiam has mobilized a team that specializes in finding sources of royalty payments. YouTube videos and covers turned out to be a huge source of missing money for several Audiam clients; Price said that when the company took responsibility for Bob Dylan’s catalog, only eight of 704 commercially released versions of “All Along the Watchtower” were receiving royalties.