Connections

Vistex: A Global Approach to Assets, Rights Management, and More

With more platforms, higher transaction volumes, and ever-changing consumer expectations of how content should work, there’s more money to be had for media and licensing organizations. For Vistex, that means helping media and entertainment companies rethink their approach to rights management.

Amos Biegun, U.K. managing director and global head of rights and royalties for Vistex, spoke with the Media & Entertainment Services Alliance (MESA) about Vistex’s solutions for film and TV distribution and sales companies, the state of avails, and the need for standards.

MESA: What does Vistex bring to the music, media and licensing industries that makes it unique?

Biegun: Vistex is the world leader in providing rights management and royalty processing software and solutions to these industries. Vistex’s software is industry leading and its key differentiator is its ability to handle projects of all sizes and scale. Vistex employs subject matters experts with industry experience and prides itself on the skills of its workforce and their commitment to these industries.

MESA: Vistex emphasizes the importance of data standards for the industries it serves, how does Vistex leverage its experience in the music industry to help industries such as media and brand licensing?

Biegun: It’s funny how the smallest (in terms of revenue) industry that we service in the music and media space – music publishers, are the most advanced when it comes to industry data standards and automated data exchange.

For over 30 years, Vistex and Counterpoint Systems before that, have been the leaders in defining and adopting industry standards for the music publishing and record label industries. These standards have helped the music industry survive a difficult time with the transition from physical to digital and then to streaming of their content. Vistex believes that the introduction of standards into film, TV, trademark, patents and all other types of IP licensing will allow these industries to grow in an accelerated manner and for the protection of content and owner property rights on a global basis.

MESA: On the media and entertainment side, can Vistex offer case examples, where clients have made especially good use of its media suite of solutions?

Biegun: Vistex has worked with hundreds of companies in the media and entertainment industry. If we focus in particular on the pure media sector (film and TV content) Vistex has implemented solutions for film and TV distribution and sales companies, talent and participation payments solutions for content creators and broadcasters, broadcast rights management systems, to name just a few.

One of the most interesting current projects that Vistex is working on in this space is the integration and automation of program and rights availability (avails) with an online portal designed to expand the reach of a broadcast company’s distribution arm to new territories and buyers. The reason this project is so interesting is that Vistex sees this as a positive disruption (if one can say that) with automated online extensions being offered to longer tail territories with both top line and longer tail content. We feel that we are at the forefront of a distribution revolution.

MESA: Across all its media and entertainment offerings, what does Vistex offer in the way of analytics?

Biegun: Vistex has extensive experience with analytics and data science. Vistex can integrate with existing BI systems and implement its own. Vistex interacts with these BI systems and core data via its ViZi tool which interrogates data and present it using a variety of additional tools. Vistex sees rights and content data stored within its system as key upstream data within its clients ecosystem and works closely with its clients to maximize the benefits of leveraging such information.

MESA: Speak to the company’s cpOnline SaaS offering for rights management and avails for indie companies, and how does the service differ between TV and film distributors?

Biegun: Vistex realized that film and TV distributors will have a more prominent role in the future as many more consumer outlets are created for content consumption, the volume of content distributed will increase dramatically and rights will get fragmented to allow for these outlets to all enjoy a piece of the pie. Vistex therefore decided to create a cloud solution for these distributors (with distinct features for film versus TV) to ensure that we are able to service what we believe will be a growing market.

In CpOnline for TV, the system is designed to allow for episodic level rights management, avails reporting and conflict checking. The film version also offers a Theatrical Bookings System.

MESA: What’s next for Vistex, what can we expect from the company in the future?

Biegun: We know that our media rights management system house the data the drives many initiatives within the industry. Broadcast scheduling, sales portals and online stores for content to name a few. We have released our Vistex Right Connector, a sophisticated API toolset empowering our customers to develop integrated solutions like those named above that need to interact with content, contract and avails data.

Additionally, we are investing heavily in providing our clients with a more automated way of interacting their clients and partners by enhancing our online portal and driving it using our Vistex VIBES technology.