Guest
Niclas Molinder
Niclas Molinder is Songwriter, Producer and Founder at Session, as introduced on the show.
Episodes (1)
Niclas Molinder, founder of Session, explains why missing metadata costs music creators royalties and why capturing it should become mandatory.
Questions these episodes answer
Why do creators lose royalties even when their music gets used?
Molinder says every royalty problem he investigated traced back to the same cause: the people who actually created a song were never identified. Once physical formats with printed credits disappeared, nobody recorded who contributed what during the session, so labels, publishers and collecting societies have no way to reconstruct it later, and the money sits unclaimed.
Why did Session decide to be free to use?
Molinder credits his investors Max Martin and Björn Ulvaeus with insisting the entry tier stay free, since a barrier to entry would stop two creators in the same room from collaborating on capturing their credits. Session runs as a freemium product, with paid storage the only tier that costs money.
Why did Session get acquired by Salt instead of staying independent?
Molinder says a small Stockholm startup with a limited budget could not compete with bigger local tech companies for developers, so Session leaned on a London tech partner for years before the two sides concluded that folding Session into that partner, now called Salt, made more sense than staying separate, with Molinder and Ulvaeus moving across too.
Why does Niclas Molinder want metadata capture to be mandatory?
Molinder argues that asking nicely and offering a free tool has not worked, so the industry should require metadata capture the same way it already requires an ISRC code before a recording can be released. He argues a mandatory step is needed because creators cannot otherwise be made to do it.
What are the two separate rights inside a single song?
Molinder explains a song is legally two things: the musical work, owned by the songwriter and their publisher and paid through a collecting society, and the sound recording, credited to every performer on it, from producer to drummer, and paid separately. Creators must register their contribution to both sides to get paid at all.