We have put together this onboarding guide to streamline the process of onboarding your catalog, activating your supply chain, ingesting your rights and reporting data as smoothly as possible.
Ingesting your Catalog
Whether you are using Revelator for distribution or not, your catalog must exist inside of our system in order to be able to use our Reporting and Royalties workflows. Revelator has integrations with some of the industry’s largest aggregators including CI, FUGA and AudioSalad so you can easily deliver your data and keep your catalog in sync. If you don't use CI or FUGA as a supply chain partner, you may be able to import your metadata and assets (audio & cover art) directly into our platform by using our Catalog Ingestion Worksheet.
CI/FUGA/AudioSalad
CI
The following outlines the steps needed in order to deliver your catalog from CI to Revelator:
Request to set up a feed to *REE* from CI
CI will contact Revelator to coordinate and notify you when you can begin your deliveries
FUGA
Here are the steps needed to deliver your catalog from FUGA to Revelator:
Contact your FUGA Account Manager to open a feed to Revelator
FUGA will contact Revelator to coordinate and notify you when you can begin your deliveries
AudioSalad
Here are the steps needed to deliver your catalog from AudioSalad to Revelator:
Contact your AudioSalad Account Manager to open a feed to Revelator
AudioSalad will contact Revelator to coordinate and notify you when you can begin your deliveries
Via Ingestion Worksheet
If you are not able to deliver your catalog via DDEX or via one of our Supply Chain partners (AudioSalad, CI, FUGA and occasionally DashGo and Ingrooves), please use the following Catalog Ingestion Worksheet. Make sure you make a copy of the Worksheet to be able to edit it.
Please pay special attention to the following when filling out the Catalog Ingestion Worksheet:
Fill out the corresponding fields in the 8 catalog insert tabs by carefully following the instructions. You must read all of the applicable notes marked throughout the process.
If the cover image and audio files need to be batch imported into your Revelator Pro account, please confirm whether you are able to set up direct download URL links to the files from a public server (Dropbox, Azure, FTP, etc.). If not, we'll work with you to figure out other options for importing your audio and artwork assets.
Note there is a 'Sample Data' tab for guidance as well.
What are the best cloud drives to use for hosting the assets to import via the template?
The best services for seamless import are Dropbox and AWS. Just about any other cloud hosting service is also supported as long as you can generate direct download links (direct = no confirmation is required; you can test this out yourself by putting the link in a browser; if it automatically triggers a download without any confirmation, then it's a direct link). Note that we do not support importing files from Google Drive.
Setting Up Your Supply Chain and Migration
Once your Catalog has been ingested, it must be re-delivered to the different DSPs according to how you set up your Supply Chain.
**Migration is not necessary if you are not delivering through Revelator. For example, you are keeping your supply chain with FUGA, and only using Revelator for royalties and Reporting.
Setting Up you Supply Chain
You can deliver your catalog in Revelator Pro through our deals with the DSPs, and/or your own Merlin/direct deals -it’s always possible to do a combination of these. When onboarding, you’ll indicate us through our Distribution Deals Worksheet:
Which deal you’ll be using for each DSP
If you have already catalog delivered to that DSP, please prepare a list of the corresponding UPCs per DSP
** NOTE: Your Account is BLOCKED from Distributing until you have indicated us your Supply Chain Setup by filling out the Distribution Deals Worksheet and shared it with our team **
Switching Distributors
Once your Catalog has been ingested into Revelator and your Distribution Deals sheet is filled, please coordinate with our team to begin the migration process. Do not issue any takedowns from your previous distributor without coordinating with us, as this could have a negative impact on listings, like, reviews, shares, play counts, etc. Each DSP has its own requirements in order to maintain the aforementioned, which is why it is essential you coordinate with our team before issuing any takedown.
Switching Licensor to Merlin/Direct Deals
If you are switching from using 3rd party aggregator deals with DSPs (FUGA/C/AudioSalad/Believe/Orchard/etc…) to deliver under your own Merlin deals, please keep in mind the below process.
Once you have been approved to be a Merlin member, we need to obtain confirmation from all the Merlin DSPs that you are opted in so that we can begin deliveries for you (this is the protocol set by Merlin and the DSPs). Note that some DSPs can be slow in confirming — you should expect it to take 7-10 days before they all confirm. There are some cases in which certain DSPs can take up to 1 month before confirming, despite us following up constantly. If it starts to take longer than expected, we'll enable a first wave of Merlin DSPs so that you're not blocked from distributing for too long. In any case, please coordinate with us before you start sending updates/takedowns through your Revelator dashboard for anything previously delivered via your previous Distributor. Before you can start doing that we'll need to migrate your catalog on the DSPs (this requires resending your full catalog to some DSPs).
Ingesting Client Accounts and Royalty Splits
To be able to generate statements and manage royalty reporting to your rights holders, they need to be added as Payees through Contracts in your Revelator Account.
This can be done manually within your Revelator account or in bulk by filling out our Contracts Worksheet.
Understanding Contracts
Our Contracts feature defines how the revenue made by your catalog in the DSPs gets split amongst your Company and your different Payees. The Contract structure is as follows:
Terms
The Terms define the Payout Rate from you to your Payees. You can define different and multiple Terms per DSP, Territory, Channels and Formats. For example:
Term #1
Payout Rate: 80%
Services: All except YouTube ContentID
Format: All
Channels: All
Territories: All
Term #2
Payout Rate: 70%
Services: Only YouTube ContentID
Format: All
Channels: All
Territories: All
Payees
The Payout Revenue after your terms, can be divided amongst different Payees/Collaborators. You’ll indicate define in our Contracts Worksheet:
Their login email address
Their PayPal email address (optional)
Their corresponding share %
Their initial Balance (can be positive or negative)
* Depending on the type of Account you have (see Parent-Child and Standalone below), you Payees will be created either as:
Distribution Payees > These are the owners of a Child Account, and have special permissions to Create Releases, and push them for Distribution.
Payee Portals > On a Standalone Setup, only you as Account Owner and your Team Members can Create Releases and push them for Distribution. In this case, Payees are invited to Payee Portals, with View (not Edit) permissions to see their Assets, view their Statements, Analytics and Distribution Status of their Assets. A Parent-Child account can also have Payee Portals for Payees that don’t create or manage Catalog/Distribution
** You can also set up Commission Payees. A commission payee is someone whose Share % is taken from the distribution fee (your cut of the contract) instead of being taken from the royalties (the cut belonging to licensors).
Assets
Finally, you will define to which Assets the Terms and Splits of the Contract will be applied to. This can be:
Account Level > see Parent-Child Setup below
Label Level > Applied to All Assets of a specific Label
Artist Level > Applied to All Assets of a specific Artist
Release Level > Applied to only specific Release(s) of an Artist/Label
Track Level > Applied to only specific Tracks(s) of an Artist/Label
For Parent-Child Accounts
If your Account is set up as Parent-Child, this means that Release Creation and Distribution workflows are off-loaded to the owner of each Child Account.
Account Level Contract
An Account Level Contract is created for each Child Account, in which the owner of the account is set up as a Distribution Payee, and the Default Terms of this Contract apply to all catalog under the Child Account.
For non-Enterprise Plans, the Default Terms are set to 100% payout rate and must be edited on a case by case basis.
Label/Artist/Release/Track Level Contracts
To ingest Royalty Splits on a more specific Level than the Account Level Contract, you should also input Label/Artist/Release/Track Level Contracts that will overwrite the Account Level Contract for the Specific Assets defined in the Contract. Please review the Sample Data that is pre-filled on our Contracts Worksheet for reference.
For Standalone Accounts
Given that, in a Stanadole Account, you as Owner of the Account, and the Team Members you assign permission to do so, are the only ones allowed to Create and Distribute Releases, all Payees are invited to Payee Portals by adding them as Payees in a Contract.
White Label Customisation
To setup the White Label Customisations of your Account, we will create a Task Management board to coordinate on the different tasks, since there are some actions you need to do on your end before we can apply the corresponding configurations in our backend:
Custom Domains
You’ll need to create CNAME Records in your DNS setting inside your hosting/domain provider for the subdomains that you’ll be using. Once you indicate us such subdomains have been added with their corresponding CNAME Records, we will connect those in the backend
Branding Images and Logos
You can set this up directly in your revelator dashboard under Account Settings > Identity and Branding
Color Scheme
You will indicate which color you want, which will be applied to your Login/Sign-up Page, as well to the different Action Buttons in your dashboard. You can indicate a Primary Color and also a separate color for the Dark Mode. We will then apply deploy in the backend.
Login/Sign-up Page
You can modify the text shown in your Login/Sign-up page as follows:
Login/Signup browser tab Title
Login Page header Text
Login Page subheader Text
Signup Page header Text
Signup Page subheader Text
If you are an API or Enterprise Customer, you can also create your own custom Login/Sign-up Page that uses our API and allows you to maintain your current user database and credentials. Please refer to our API Documentation.
External Site or Dashboard Link
If you are on an Enterprise Plan, yo8u can add an additional menu in your Dashboard pointing to whatever URL you indicate us.
Email Setup
In order for our system to send emails with your branding and using your domain, we need to create the custom templates and authenticate your domain in the backend
Custom Email Templates
Once you have set up your Branding Images and Logos, Color Scheme, and Custom Domains, you’ll need to:
Indicate the email address and name that will be used in the emails (EmailFromAddress and EmailFromName)
With this information, we will generate your Custom Email Templates for your review. You’ll then let us know of any changes to be applied, and we’ll upload such templates in our database once they have been approved
Afterwards, you’ll need to add DKIM and SPF settings to MX records with your DNS provider/domain registrar so emails don't immediately get blocked or flagged as spam. Our team will help you by providing the values to be added.
Once the DKIM and SPF configurations are correctly added, we will send an authentication email to an active/existing address under your company domain.
User Support
You can point your users to your own Support and FAQ:
FAQ section: URL or email address
Help section: URL or email address (can be the same as FAQ)
IntercomAppId (optional)
User Policies
You can have your custom Distribution Policy and Privacy/Terms of Use Policy. These will be hosted as a pdf file.