You hold the rights. You expect the collection. You file what you can. Year on year, the picture repeats: royalties accruing in places you cannot see, against works you cannot prove, in territories you cannot reach. Black Box closes the gap. Discovery, evidence, claim, recovery. Tribunal-grade, in a quarter rather than a year.
A fixed-fee discovery sweep across your catalogue against the 207 million-track reference. Identifies the works most likely to carry uncollected income, ranked by recovery probability and territory.
For every work that passes triage, a tribunal-grade evidence pack: chain of authorship, plays, listeners, territories, the gap. Built to file, built to defend, built to settle.
Filing through to settlement. Society correspondence, royalty-statement reconciliation, and a transparent ledger you can show the writer or the trustees on day forty-five.
Once recovery is in motion, ongoing monitoring against your active catalogue. Title-variant detection, ISRC drift, registration gaps - flagged the day they appear, not the year-end audit.
Most publishers begin with SCOUT - a fixed-fee triage that ends in a ranked recovery schedule and a clear go / no-go gate. If the numbers warrant it, FILE produces the evidence packs. If the evidence packs settle, RECOVER manages the claim through to payment.
The three stages are commercially separable. You can run SCOUT alone. You can stop after FILE. We will tell you, before each gate, whether the next stage is worth taking.
SCOUT is fixed-fee. FILE is per-work, with the rate reflecting complexity. RECOVER is outcome-based, taken as a percentage of recoveries. Where the numbers warrant it we will take more contingent risk in exchange for a cleaner success rate.
No subscription. No annual seat licence. The engagement is the engagement.
Open a Black Box enquiry→A standard audit looks at what you have collected and asks whether the calculation was right. We look at what you have not collected and assemble the evidence to claim it. The two are complementary; we work alongside audit firms regularly.
SCOUT is fixed-fee and scales down. We have run sweeps on catalogues of 200 titles and on catalogues of 200,000. The economics work either side of that range. The conversation is about probability of recovery, not catalogue size.
Chain-of-authorship documentation, registered ISWCs and ISRCs, society-by-society registration status, territory-level performance and streaming evidence, and a documented gap calculation. Designed to be filed, defended at tribunal, or used as the basis for a settlement letter.
SCOUT triage is 4 weeks. FILE production is 6 to 12 weeks per pack depending on complexity. RECOVER varies by society and territory; we have settled in 91 days and we have settled in 14 months. The first two stages are predictable; the third is honest about its variance.
Outcome-based, taken from successful recoveries. The exact rate depends on engagement size, complexity, and the territories involved. We are happy to take some contingent fee risk where the numbers warrant it.
Tell us how big the catalogue is, what you suspect is leaking, and which territories matter most. SCOUT will tell you, in four weeks, whether the recovery is real.
Open a Black Box enquiry→