Field Notes from the four Offices.
Source-backed dispatches from four Music Intel Offices. Each published note identifies its evidence class, dates, method, limitations and direct sources so readers can separate public evidence from Music Intel analysis and editorial opinion.
Chief Executive's Office
Music Data Intelligence
Market sizing, commercial consequence, and the money on the table. Board and investor facing. It does the sums and shows them.
Streaming Didn’t Just Change How We Listen. It Turned Music Into a Data Industry
Paper 01 of the Music Intel research series traces how streaming quietly rebuilt the music industry, from units sold to usage counted. Download the free paper.
The Music Industry Built a Global Distribution System Before It Built a Global Identity System
Paper 02 of the Music Intel research series explains why music has more data than ever, yet the complete picture around a work or recording is still so hard to establish.
You Don’t Know What You’re Missing: The Practical Limits of Royalty Investigation
Paper 03 of the Music Intel research series asks how any royalty investigator, however experienced, can know that everything reasonably available has been considered.
Investigating the Information: What Royalty Investigation Can Learn From Mature Investigative Markets
Paper 04 of the Music Intel research series looks at how legal disclosure and digital forensics solved the too-much-data problem, and what that means for royalty investigation.
The Economics of Knowing: When Better Music Data Becomes Financial Intelligence
The final paper in the Music Intel research series shows how the data that answers ‘have I been paid correctly?’ can also help answer ‘what is this catalogue worth?’
The MLC historical royalties pool: what the current figures show
The MLC reported an adjusted historical total of $397.3 million and $238.7 million distributed through September 2026. The remaining balance is not automatically synonymous with unmatched royalties.
Neighbouring rights are substantial, international and data-dependent
Current PPL, GVL and SENA figures show the scale of neighbouring-rights activity. Coverage, mandates, eligibility and recording data determine the path to payment.
Chief Operations Office
Harmonic Considerations
Controls, screening methods and practical operating decisions. Practitioner and procedural. It ends with something you can put into your week.
What Personal Values Mean in Business
A founder-authored statement on how honesty, kindness, acceptance and gratitude shape the way Music Intel builds, works with people and makes decisions.
Chief Data Office
Music, Data & Insights
Identifiers, matching, standards, and the failures nobody sees. Technical and measured. Every claim carries the number it was measured against.
When Bad Data Hits the Wrong Note: The Data Understanding & Quality Crisis Facing the Music Industry
Poorly understood, incomplete and inconsistent music data makes accurate rights identification and timely royalty payment increasingly difficult.
The data has outgrown the music industry
A source-backed analysis of why fragmented identifiers and metadata still delay attribution and payment, and why AI makes data governance more important.
CWR carries registrations at scale. Submitted is not the same as resolved.
CWR is an established registration format. A practical guide to acknowledgements, conflicts and the controls needed after a file is submitted.
Chief Creative Office
For the Record
Narrative, investigation and the human story behind music data. First person and journalistic. It argues, and it says who it is arguing with.
From Filing Cabinets to 10 Trillion Touchpoints: The Evolution of Data in the Music Industry
A personal view from Karl Parsons
How artificial streaming puts music decisions at risk
An editorial view, checked against platform policy and a federal fraud case, on why genuine listening intent matters more than inflated headline counts.
Why identifiers and identity matching matter to royalty allocation
Names, aliases, roles, works and recordings must be connected with evidence. A plain-language guide to identity records, unmatched royalties and suspense.
Unauthorised uploads and recording identity abuse: what the public evidence establishes
Unauthorised uploads and malicious artist-profile attachments are documented. Their frequency and any direct royalty-diversion mechanism are not established by the public sources reviewed here.
How publication works.
Published notes pass an evidence gate and show their source list, method and limitations. Evidence-incomplete drafts remain out of search, feeds and product journeys until that work is complete. To receive new Field Notes by email when they post, Suggest a research question.