What is Simbals?
Simbals specializes in audio analysis, music recognition, and metadata enrichment using AI. They focus on analyzing and classifying audio through audio fingerprints, machine learning, and AI-driven algorithms.
FUGA has started using Simbals as part of its internal Quality Control process. Simbals provides a music fingerprinting solution to prevent copyright infringement and fraudulent behavior in the music distribution supply chain.
What do they do?
Simbals has over 150 million fingerprints in its database, ranging from commercially released music to specific production music, and is currently rolling out recognition for sped-up and slowed-down versions as well. As such, their coverage is wider than FUGA clients.
FUGA, Downtown, and other distributors leverage Simbals for music recognition and to ensure that delivered content does not infringe upon anyone's rights. In addition, organizations can use Simbals for broadcast monitoring and to pay necessary rightsholders.
How does it work?
FUGA uses Simbals to ensure no other parties are delivering your catalog. There are two sides to this:
- For any new delivery over an aggregation feed, FUGA will scan delivered audio against Simbals’ database to see if a particular track may already be out there, or whether the delivered music may be a sped-up or slowed-down version of an existing piece of music. This does not mean a delivery would be automatically blocked if a piece of music is recognized, but it would help us contextualize a release.
- To ensure your music is recognized, we ask you to deliver your catalog to Simbals. That way, if someone is trying to deliver your music a sped-up or slowed-down version of your music, we will be able to catch this.
When Simbals receives your releases, they create a fingerprint file, store the metadata, and subsequently remove the audio.
Please note: We generally recommend you submit your music to Simbals as it is being used by other distributors.
What happens if my content is flagged by Simbals?
In the event you deliver a release over an aggregation feed and FUGA’s QC tool, using Simbals detects a track with the same, or different, metadata, FUGA’s Quality Control team may contact you asking about the context of this release. A fingerprint hit does not automatically mean a delivery is blocked, but it does help us contextualize a release.
Examples of flags include, but are not limited to:
- a compilation
- a delivery with specific territories where you have licensed your release to another label for a specific territory
In such cases, we may ask you to confirm whether deliveries have completed as intended.
Is it possible for me to select what gets included in the Simbals database?
Simbals will be included as a DSP option in your Product Delivery Instructions. The feed will operate as any other DSP connection in the FUGA platform allowing you to deliver whichever content you see fit. Sending a takedown over this feed will remove the specific product fingerprint from the Simbals database, thus giving you full control over your catalog.