As indicated last year, we are actively planning the future of HLMSW which will be depreciated within the next five years in favour of the soon-to-be launched music publishing platform Chordata.
In 2022 HLMSW will be twenty years old – a remarkable age for any software. Over the intervening decades, the system has grown and changed along with the needs of our customers but there are some ongoing challenges that cannot be resolved through updates alone. In particular while the centralised Windows/SQL architecture has served us well, the new paradigm of a decentralised workforce accessing larger distribution centres is challenging for HLMSW administrators everywhere.
When I first saw Chordata, I knew that this is the future. Chordata is the first tool I have seen that manages to resolve the complicated relationship between all forms of publications, the authors and benefactors, and the distribution channels they feed. All of this served in a efficient but elegant web interface that has been created by an amazing team of engineers that understand how music publishing actually works.
Chordata and BTMI have been working closely for a while now, and this relationship will become stronger as we work to integrate our IP and knowledge to create a partnership that will serve music publishing for decades to come.
HLMSW and Chordata together
While hire/rental functionality will be not be included in the package on release, Chordata can directly manage the titles in your HLMSW automatically (so that you will only have one source of composer and title information). HLMSW will continue as the primary tool for managing hire/rental transactions during this time, but will be included as part of the Chordata offering or as a stand-alone package.
Development of the rental functionality will commence after the launch of Chordata 2.0 in 2022 so that this it is ready for preview in 2023.
Of course, as part of the process we will provide resources to make the move from HLMSW to Chordata as easy as possible. When this happens, your team will enjoy some of the immediate benefits that Chordata will bring to your operation including:
- State-of-the-art centralised management of all aspects of your operation
- Elegant web-based interface accessible from anywhere
- Simple access to all current and future distribution channels – sales, rental, web, digital
- A comprehensive API (Application Programming Interface) that ensures that Chordata will be able to feed all other platforms both internal and external.
In addition to HLMSW, Chordata will be closely aligned with our other offerings such as Zinfonia, in© and the UIC for the best experience for you and your customers.
HLMSW Roadmap to Chordata
Below is the provisional roadmap for HLMSW’s integration into Chordata.
2022 – Chordata 2 .0 released
- Copyright Management
- Digital Assets Management
- Musical Data Management
- Contact Management
- Product Data Management
- Royalties
- Chordata API for 3rd-party integrations to ERPs and Digital Platforms published
April 2023 – Rental Processing added
- The ability manage rental functionality incorporated directly in Chordata, along with migration tools to move from HLMSW to Chordata
January 2025 – HLMSW development ceases
- HLMSW will continue to provide maintenance releases for any problems for as long as maintenance agreements are in place, but development of new functionality will cease at this time.
We will of course keep you all up to date throughout this exciting journey here.
Stay tuned for more!