Symphonic Distribution Scales Royalty Payments with Tipalti Mass Payments
- Automated monthly royalty payments for 100,000+ clients representing an additional 500,000+ artists
- Leveraged Tipalti’s mass payments solution to serve artists on all seven continents
- Consolidated several disparate payment methods into just one
Although he thoroughly enjoyed the creative work of making music, producer and DJ Jorge Brea grew increasingly frustrated with the challenges of distributing his recordings, monitoring the commercial performance of those songs in the market, and getting paid for their use. Recognizing that many artists faced the same challenges, Jorge founded Symphonic Distribution, which has become one of the most successful and trusted music technology and services companies—offering a proprietary content management and distribution platform, global royalty collection and split payments, and robust label services to independent labels, managers, and artists.
500,000
Artists’ Music Distributed
500M+
in Royalties Paid Out
Best Instrument for the Job
Symphonic Distribution is, first and foremost, a technology company—developing innovative digital solutions that empower creators to take their music global and ensure they’re properly compensated for every sale, stream, and download. With that technology-first mindset, the team has always looked for tools and tech to improve its operations instead of adding more employees to carry out tasks manually.
Our core business and focus is to ensure that creators have a means of getting their music out there and obviously getting paid for it. Our technology is one of our strong pillars, besides everything that we do in terms of customer service and community, our technology is a differentiator.
Jorge Brea | Founder and CEO, Symphonic Distribution
A Difficult Note for Finance
In their early days as a scrappy startup, Symphonic Distribution’s small team was able to manually compile payment earnings across the major digital streaming platforms and pay clients accordingly. But as their client list grew to thousands, and then tens of thousands, managing all of that data—and ensuring timely royalty payments to every record label and artist—became impossible with the company’s manual processes.
- Automate Monthly Royalty Payments to Clients Globally
- Improve KYC (Know Your Customer) Initiatives by Authenticating Clients for Payment
- Ensure Security and Compliance of Clients’ Personal Data
- Streamline Services Including Clients’ Tax-Data Collection and Royalty Sharing
When Creativity Is a Team Effort
Among Symphonic Distribution’s innovative offerings is its SplitShare service. Creators can add collaborators to their account in the platform, set their agreed-upon revenue splits, and the company will automatically distribute the proper royalty payouts to each collaborator every month. The more popular this service became with creators, the more challenging the small team found it to manually keep up with processing the ever-increasing revenue splits.
We serve hundreds of thousands of clients—some in other countries, who need payment in local currency—and we’re paying them each month for earnings across 200 streaming platforms. That’s difficult enough, but when we added SplitShare, where every payment might be distributed to many collaborators, finance automation became a must-have.
Jorge Brea | Founder and CEO, Symphonic Distribution
Tipalti Mass Payments: Music to Their Ears
When they upgraded to Tipalti’s mass payments solution, Symphonic Distribution found that financial operations were no longer an obstacle to scaling the business. With Tipalti automating payouts worldwide, assuming data-security responsibilities by storing clients’ personal data, and automating clients’ taxable-earnings summaries, Symphonic Distribution was able to focus on growing its business and improving the client experience.
- Automated Monthly Client and Vendor Payouts Worldwide
- Improved Trust and Safety Infrastructure with Tipalti’s Client Payment Verification
- Enhanced Client Security by Transferring PII Data to Tipalti’s Compliant Systems
- Improved Efficiency and Service with Automated Tax Summaries and Royalty Sharing
Finance Picks Up the Tempo
With Tipalti’s mass payments helping onboard new clients and processing payments more easily and reliably than ever, Symphonic Distribution has been able to focus on expanding its global presence—with a physical footprint in over a dozen countries. Regardless of how much the company’s industry-leading music distribution service continues to grow, the lean team knows they’ll be able to continue delivering an excellent experience to every client.
Our accounts payable team is incredibly lean, with just two people managing over 60,000 clients. And a lot of that operational efficiency is directly thanks to Tipalti.
Jorge Brea | Founder and CEO, Symphonic Distribution
Giving Music Creators a Voice
Symphonic Distribution’s founding mission was to help independent musicians grow their audience, enhance their brand, and maximize their revenue opportunities. With the efficient workflow processes their team has enacted—and by selecting the right automation tools, including Tipalti—the company is delivering on that promise for tens of thousands of creators globally.
