Current platform is outdated

Maria Juul Jensen, CTO at Koda, spearheads the work on the new IT platform. She reports that although it is a large investment, it would be more expensive for Koda’s members if we were to continue with the existing setup. The fact is that while the current platform is stable, it is also outdated in terms of providing the kind of solutions and services that Koda’s members increasingly demand.

The IT platform serves two fundamental functions: reporting music usage and distributing royalties. As Maria Juul Jensen puts it: ‘It is our core system’.

‘We crunch the numbers and make our distributions to members based on what happens inside that machine. Our core data resides in the machine.”

When she says ‘machine’, she means it quite literally. Because right now, Koda’s IT platform consists of two computers arranged in a system of so-called hardware redundancy. This means that if one machine crashes, the other can take over. They can handle large amounts of data, but the setup includes an expensive service agreement, and has technical limitations in terms of developing and adapting to the ongoing digital developments. What is more, such physical storage is inflexible compared to modern cloud services.

‘One major challenge of the old system is that it uses code that is becoming obsolete. This means that it is becoming more and more difficult to find developers who know the programming language,’ explains Maria Juul Jensen.

Getting the members’ data out into the light

An example of one of the possibilities offered by the new platform concerns ‘matching’. In this context, ‘matching’ is crucial in cases where information about a given work is incomplete or incorrect, for example if the information contains spelling errors or because it comes from another country.

‘As part of our agreement with Spanish Point, they will fine-tune our matching engine, such that the system can automatically see if there is, for example, a 99, 90 or 70 per cent match. This reduces the amount of manual work required, which in turns means that we can devote more effort to those areas that are a little more complex and require human input. All this will benefit Koda’s members, as royalties will reach them faster, and at the same time the number of unprocessed cases is expected to decrease’.

Another ambition with the new platform is to activate the members’ data. As Maria Juul Jensen says:

‘We receive millions of data every month, and instead of having all this information lying unused in the dark, it can now be brought to light and give Koda members greater insight into how their music is used. Right now, we can only show data from up to five years back in time because of storage constraints in the current system. If, for example, you want figures covering a period of 20 years, you need to contact us. Our ambition is to make it possible for our members to find the figures they’re looking for and explore them on their own. For example, you might enter some specific parameters and then get a map where you can see how your music is doing in Sweden, and then you might zoom in on, for example, Malmö and Linköping. That way, members can use their data actively’.

A supplier with in-depth insight into the music industry

Spanish Point was chosen for the task after careful deliberation: an initial market scan was followed by a tender process carried out by Koda in co-operation with our partners within the Polaris set-up, Tono in Norway and Teosto in Finland, who both faced the same challenge.

‘Spanish Point is a natural choice: they have worked within the music industry for a long time and through this have built up an enormous insight. When we speak to them, it’s clear that they know what we are talking about. And we do not have to build a new platform from scratch. The system is already there, which makes it easier to get them to develop or configure what we want,’ says Maria Juul Jensen.

A system of independent building blocks

IT projects are notorious for being late, expensive, and out of date when they are finally completed. To avoid such things happening in the case of Koda’s new platform, Maria Juul Jensen and her department use the MVP (minimum viable product) method:

‘This means that you make a tiny part of the system first. We will set up the whole system, but initially we will focus specifically on the radio area and check how everything works’.

This carefully controlled and clearly defined approach makes it possible to continuously test, evaluate and adjust the system according to the results. That way, you won’t spend months developing systems and processes that may ultimately not work.

Koda aims to make the new platform as agile as possible, ensuring that it can be changed and adapted to meet any future requirements that may crop up.

‘We treat the system as a collection of building blocks that you can put together and build on. That’s also why the IT architecture – meaning how these systems fit together – is hugely important: they must not interfere and create obstacles for each other,’ she says and continues:

‘We have also put a great deal of effort into preparing for what will happen in the next few years. How should we deal with the fact that new requirements may arise, demanding things from our system that we do not know about today? This too we have tried to counteract via our architecture, where we aim to make the systems independent of each other. This means that you can build and take out individual parts of the system without the whole thing falling apart’.

The new IT platform will, according to plan, be put into use in early 2025. There will be a break-in period, during which the current and the new system will run concurrently until the old platform is completely ready to be shut down.