The three sister societies Koda, Teosto and TONO have formalized their collaboration in the company POLARIS AS since 2013. – The collaboration equips us for the challenges of the future, says TONO CEO, Cato Strøm.
/ 28/05/2018 / Willy MartinsenThe three sister societies Koda, Teosto and TONO have formalized their collaboration in the company POLARIS AS since 2013. – The collaboration equips us for the challenges of the future, says TONO CEO, Cato Strøm.
The Nordic management organisations have cooperated closely since the 1920s. The joint ownership of NCB, for licensing mechanical rights and synchronization, is one example. Another is the joint development of systems for works documentation, reporting and distribution, which the companies did for the first time in the 90s. The cooperation has been valuable to the companies over the decades in terms of costs, efficiency and sharing of expertise.
From 2007, the collaboration between TONO and Koda became closer, especially around joint reporting and distribution systems. With the establishment of Polaris Nordic in 2013, Teosto also joined as an equal partner, and the systems were renamed to various Polaris
name.
– The collaboration through Polaris Nordic has given us increased efficiency, reduced costs and even better quality in the work we do, states TONO Managing Director, Cato Strøm.
Polaris is noticeably present in TONO's daily work. Polaris projects are being worked on in a number of departments, from overall strategic to the development of new systems. Polaris Nordic is also a single customer for the company ICE, which is a joint supplier of the works documentation systems used by Koda, Teosto and TONO.
– Polaris Nordic's collaboration with ICE Services in Berlin was entered into in 2015, and is basically a five-year agreement whereby ICE collects, updates and supplies its customers with correct plant documentation at all times. This is an absolutely necessary basis for the settlements to be correct down to the plant level, says Strøm.
The Polaris collaboration is not least about the future.
– We established Polaris Future Lab in June 2017. This is a joint development initiative where we are rethinking the existing work processes in the collective management model. It is an expression of significant ambitions among the three companies, says Strøm.
The project has identified key areas for adopting new technologies and development processes. A concept building phase has also been worked on to identify development tracks and possible problem areas for the project. The keywords are the use of artificial intelligence, machine learning and Design Thinking with agile methods.
– So what does the future hold for the Polaris companies?
– The collective management companies constitute an important part of what we can call the music industry. But we face strong competition. Customers can use freely purchased music from suppliers outside our world. Therefore, we must ensure that we remain attractive to rights holders in the future.
Power ends:
– The Polaris companies are far ahead technologically, and we have succeeded in meeting the digital revolution offensively. This has yielded gains for our rights holders.
We also help provide consumers and communities with easy access to music, while ensuring users have access to rights in an efficient manner. The Polaris collaboration has made us all stronger.
