SaaS-based payments processing firm Exactuals has acquired Backlash Solutions, a digital music company that specializes in helping industry professionals organize data and more efficiently calculate royalties.
As part of the deal, Backlash President and CEO Joe DeCanio and his current employees are in the process of opening a new office in New York City, which will remain in contact with Exactuals’ existing branches in Nashville and Los Angeles. This NYC team will develop and update a cloud-based royalty-calculation system and enhance the accessibility of Exactuals’ PaymentHub.
PaymentHub is a software solution that arranges and facilitates payments to non-employees, with an emphasis on royalties and residuals.
Exactuals CEO Mike Hurst founded the platform in 2011 at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Exactuals was quickly adopted by prominent entertainment industry companies, as its software dramatically simplifies the tasks associated with calculating and issuing royalties, among other things.
In August of 2018, Exactuals was acquired by longtime investor City National Bank. Based out of Los Angeles, City is sometimes referred to as the “Bank to the Stars” because its clients include a number of high-profile entertainment-industry professionals. As of January 2019, the total value of City National Bank’s assets was over $50 billion.
Exactuals is pursuing a longer-term plan to bring additional, related assets into the fold.
Last year, Exactuals debuted R.AI, a comprehensive rights-tracking service that aims to better differentiate and identify songwriting and performance credits, both to make the royalty payment process easier for streaming services and to maximize the payments received by artists. In its most basic form, R.AI is an automated curator of songs’ metadata—a point that further separates it from other platforms.
Backlash’s Joe DeCanio graduated from St. John’s University School of Law and, in 2002, became a vice president at JPMorgan Chase. He left the latter in 2006 to found Backlash Solutions.