> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.hypebot.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Your Catalog Needs an API - URL: https://www.hypebot.com/your-catalog-needs-an-api/ - Published: 2026-10-30T12:08:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-30T12:07:59.000Z - Description: The music industry’s next big breakthrough will be making licensing as seamless as streaming, using API-powered infrastructure to unlock new revenue. - Author: Guest Author - Tags: licensing, catalog, music catalogs, song catalogs, Opinions, global gaming league, infrastructure, music royalties, Royalties, artist rights, copyrights, rights, Distribution, DSP *By *Nick Ditri* of* [***Global Gaming League***](https://www.globalgamingleague.com/?ref=hypebot.com) After spending most of my career somewhere between making records and figuring out how music actually moves through the world, I’ve seen the same problem surface time and time again. As an artist, label owner, publisher, music supervisor, and now working across gaming, partnerships and licensing at the Global Gaming League, creating and distributing music has gotten dramatically easier, but actually clearing, licensing and using it still feels way more complicated than it should. With more than 100,000 songs uploaded to [DSPs](https://www.hypebot.com/tag/streaming-music/) every day, it has never been easier to get music out into the world. But if a game developer, brand or filmmaker wants to actually use one of those songs, the process can still mean emails, contracts, managers, publishers, lawyers and, in some cases, weeks of back-and-forth just to get an answer. That’s where the idea of an API comes in… **API** stands for **Application Programming Interface**. In simple terms, it’s what lets two pieces of software talk to each other. When you share a Spotify song directly to Instagram Stories and the title, artwork and link automatically carry over, an API is helping make that happen. ## **So what if music rights could work the same way?** Global recorded music revenue reached **$31.7B** in **2025,** it’s 11th consecutive year of [growth](https://www.hypebot.com/tag/growth/), with over 837M paid music subscription users worldwide. While we can have a separate conversation about how those profits are split between creators, DSPs, and labels, it is clear the music industry has solved distribution, yet it still hasn’t solved permissions. Users increasingly want to participate in the creative process and it is no different than UGC content on [TikTok](https://www.hypebot.com/tag/tiktok/) or [Instagram](https://www.hypebot.com/tag/instagram). [Spotify](https://www.hypebot.com/tag/instagram) announced a paid add-on that will allow fans to make licensed covers and remixes from participating UMG catalogs, with artists and songwriters compensated. In addition, **Merlin** and **Kobalt** have both jumped in to get involved with this model. This is all happening as **UMG** and **ElevenLabs** have announced a multi-year agreement for licensed [AI](https://www.hypebot.com/tag/ai/) that will enable fans to create remixes, mashups and new interpretations of participating tracks. Derivative use of existing catalog is about to go haywire. Once this gets to scale, it becomes a real economic model for rights holders. YouTube demonstrated this with Content ID. By December of 2024, it had generated more than $12 billion in ad revenue for rights holders. By June of 2025, it reported more than 2 billion logged-in viewers watching music videos every month. When you pile those numbers on top of Roblox reporting 123.9 billion hours of gameplay on the platform, these ecosystems show and prove in a massive way. Then comes the question: ***who is managing all of these permissions and how?*** ## **Your catalog needs an API.** Not necessarily a literal public API where anyone can grab masters. Think of it as a permission layer that can answer instantly: - Who owns this? - What can I do with it? - Where? - For how much? - Under what restrictions? - Who gets paid? I was deeply involved in the Music NFT space and believed this answered the very thing I’m preaching here. After helping a few platforms generate millions in revenue and scale quickly, it was easy to see this could be a credible way for creators to layer in their permissions within digital assets. Web3 nailed the rights layer connected to Smart contracts early. It promised digital ownership, programmable economics, automatic payments all connected to digital assets. Yet programmability by itself wasn't enough to create widespread adoption and ultimately the speculation around NFT’s caused their demise in the market. So now what? We need catalog API to operationalize rights, not just try to financialize them. As of February 2026, [The MLC](https://www.hypebot.com/tag/mlc/) reported roughly $614.9M in blanket royalties pending distribution, including **$328.2M unmatched** and **$260.5M** tied to **unclaimed shares.** If basic ownership and payment data can already create hundreds of millions of dollars in friction, expanding music into millions of new interactive uses requires dramatically better machine-readable rights information. Those rights can include everything from territory and ownership to UGC permission and AI permission. From prohibited categories to minimum fees required for sync usage. A living, breathing list that can be built on at any time. Parts of the industry are already proving that standardized permissions can work. The imprint NCS gives creators clear rules for using its catalog across platforms like **YouTube** and **Twitch. Monstercat** and **Chillhop** do similar things through creator licensing programs. **Epidemic Sound** went further by making its catalog available through an API. None of these models fully solve music licensing, but they prove the core point that not every use of a song needs to begin with a lengthy email thread. **FSTRX** is addressing the sync side of exactly what I’m talking about. As Devin Powers of FSTRX puts it: > *“There’s more lost music than found music.”* The platform is designed to reduce the friction that keeps good music buried in catalogs. By bringing search, music-to-picture review, notes, approvals and licensing into one workspace, and allowing API-enabled catalogs to connect without moving their music, FSTRX is making the sync process exponentially faster. The days of cluttered Dropbox folders and long form paperwork will be gone before we know it…REJOICE! In Devin’s words, the goal is to: > *“Remove the friction that keeps music sitting in catalogs instead of reaching its next opportunity.”* That’s my broader point here. The better rights infrastructure does to make licensing more efficient, the more it creates opportunities for music to actually move. Our Global Gaming League Chairman, **Jeff Hoffman**, was part of the founding team at **Priceline**, which later acquired **Booking.com**. What the travel industry figured out is almost exactly what I think music needs to evolve to. A hotel room still has changing availability, pricing, cancellation policies, occupancy rules, taxes and dozens of other variables. The breakthrough was making all of that complexity readable and transactable by software and removing tons of friction from having to call an agent, hotel, or airline directly to sort out plans. Today, Booking.com can surface more than 32 million reported accommodation listings across 220+ countries and territories without someone emailing every hotel for permission to book a room. The lesson from Jeff's world is that unstructured complexity is the problem, not complexity alone. Our catalogs need the same leap (*…for my sanity, please!*). The last 20 years were spent making catalogs searchable, accessible and streamable. The next competitive advantage could be making those same catalogs usable, adaptable and licensable at machine speed. --- **Nick Ditri* is the VP of Business Development at* [***Global Gaming League***](https://www.globalgamingleague.com/?ref=hypebot.com)*.*