SESAC Guardians of Royalty

Bob Dylan, U2, Mary J. Blige, Garth Brooks, Nelly Furtado, Justin Timberlake, Beyoncé — and the list goes on and on. These are just a handful of the thousands and thousands of artists who have performed SESAC-affiliated songs through the years.

SESAC—a "performing rights organization" headquartered in Nashville (with offices in New York, Los Angeles and London)—represents songwriters and publishers in their right to be compensated every time their music is performed in public. In other words, after a writer or publisher affiliates with SESAC, SESAC collects royalties from radio and television stations, auditoriums, restaurants or any other music user that plays the writer/publishers' copyrighted music. The organization then distributes the royalties—minus an administrative fee—to these affiliates.

"Our goal is to impress and delight our customers, and we use technology as one of the primary tools to do that," says Michael Eck, SESAC vice president and CIO.

From self-guided Internet applications that allow songwriters to conduct business such as registering songs or updating account information online to cutting-edge performance detection technology that enables SESAC to monitor song use, SESAC employs a variety of technological innovations. The organization was the first to utilize Nielsen's Broadcast Data Systems to monitor radio performances through digital pattern recognition technology. It recently entered into a service agreement with DigSound, a verification and reporting services company, to begin watermarking music tracks marketed to television broadcasters for select SESAC publisher affiliates.

And although SESAC partners with tech-based companies to develop its services, the organization also does quite a bit in-house to meet its specific business needs.

"These services provide performance information, but they don't tell you which performances are for SESAC affiliates, so we have to develop our own logic and systems to process those that are SESAC," Eck says.

In addition, Eck says SESAC developed an automated mailing and fulfillment system because it could not find a system on the market that offered the flexibility that SESAC needs to communicate with its songwriters, publishers and the licensees (music users who secure a license from SESAC to legally play any song in the SESAC reparatory). He says SESAC has 10 full-time employees in its IT division, and although there's not much turnover, he anticipates a greater future need as SESAC continues its quest to find the best technological solutions to assist its affiliates.

After all, in his 14 years with the organization, Eck has witnessed firsthand how technology has revolutionized the music industry and the way SESAC does business.