Treated Like Royalty
Online merchants will rack up $30 billion in sales next year, according to Commerce Department estimates. Many of the items sold online, such as music and software, will require merchants to pay license or royalty fees, so it should come as no surprise that a company is offering to track those sales--for a fee.
Two executives with off-line experience in royalty tracking said last week that they are turning their attention to the World Wide Web with the launch of RoyaltyConsultants.com. The Los Angeles start-up aims to collect data about online sales of items ranging from software to videos in order to help copyright and trademark holders collect the royalties due them.
The firm--founded by Keith Bernstein, PolyGram/A&M; Records’ former royalty cop, and Steven Ambers, a onetime senior manager for royalty compliance at Moss Adams--is the first to attempt the daunting task of auditing online sales. But Bernstein and Ambers said they have developed software that can be integrated with other e-commerce programs to automatically calculate royalties for products sold online. That would prevent merchants from underreporting sales in order to reduce royalty payments.
