Photo Credit: Raph PH / CC by 2.0
Following a $5 million funding round led by Metallica over the summer, digital rights management company Word Collections secures a deal to provide global publishing administration for TLC’s T-Boz and the TLC music publishing catalog, as well as R&B hitmaker Allen Stone.
Digital rights management company Word Collections has landed a deal to provide publishing administration for Grammy winner Tionne Watkins — best known as T-Boz, founding member of R&B group TLC — as well as the full TLC music publishing catalog, and R&B hitmaker Allen Stone.
Founded by Jeff Price of TuneCore and Audiam, Word Collections launched in July 2020 with an initial focus on global publishing administration for comedians and other spoken word artists. In August 2021, Word Collections expanded its global publishing administration repertoire to include musical compositions.
Proudly a first-of-its-kind admin company that identifies original, live, and cover-versions of all recordings of songs, Word Collections pays songwriters, publishers, and authors quickly, with “unparalleled accuracy and transparency.” The company secured $5 million in funding this past August, led by Metallica’s Black Squirrel Partners.
In its first year, Word Collections reports identifying and collecting more than $1 billion in earned and unpaid royalties for broadcasts and streams of spoken word comedy performances. The company employs what it calls a unique, direct licensing business model, utilizing proprietary sound recording identification technology and “groundbreaking income tracking systems.”
“The traditional industry has adopted a business strategy and practices to allows the inefficiencies to exist and to take and allocate to themselves others’ royalties based on their market share,” the company said in 2021. “Rather than capitalize on a broken system to the detriment of comedians, songwriters, and music publishers, Word Collections fixes it and gets the money into the rights holders’ pockets while removing liability for digital services.”
Word Collections administers the publishing catalogs of bands and musicians including Metallica, Metallica’s Kirk Hammett, Greta Van Fleet, Jason Mraz, Grace Potter, St. Paul & the Broken Bones, The 502s, Sublime with Rome, Silversun Pickups, John Oates, Houndmouth, The Walters, Thomas Dolby, the Songwriters Guild of America, Gerencia360, St. Nicholas, Baroness, The Offspring’s Bryan “Dexter” Holland, Shriekback, DLG, Bazanji, and Gomba Music.
Comedians whose publishing work Word Collections administers include Robin Williams, George Carlin, Margaret Cho, Jerry Seinfeld, David Cross, Ron White, Bill Hicks, Bill Engvall, and Billy Crystal. The company also administers many other songwriters, publishers, authors, and spoken word comedians.