System · Automation · Rights
Rights that travel with the file
An Airtable intake that captures usage rights at delivery and keeps them attached to the assets, built for 20+ producer teams.
- 20+
- producer teams, about 10,000 assets a week
- ~5 weeks
- of work handed back to each asset manager per year (about 4 hours a week)
- ~2 hrs
- saved per producer team every two weeks
The problem
Licensed photography, talent, music and stock come with conditions: where an asset can run, for how long, and in which markets. When that information lives in email threads and spreadsheets, it gets separated from the file, and that's how an asset ends up somewhere it isn't licensed to run.
Producers also had no way to see where their delivery stood, so librarians spent hours answering status questions and chasing missing details.
What I built
- One intake per delivery that asks for rights and usage details up front.
- Rights metadata that travels with the files into the DAM.
- A live status view, so producers can check their own requests.
- Automatic completion notices instead of manual emails.
- AEM-ready bulk metadata sheets generated from the intake, with an automated push on the way.
- Processing metrics that feed reporting for operations, finance, business affairs and creative leadership.
Results
Producers spend about two hours less every two weeks on delivery and metadata. Each asset manager gets back roughly four hours a week from reporting, follow-ups and completion emails, and librarians stopped colliding on the same tasks.
The principle
Rights captured at intake are cheap. Rights hunted down after an asset has already been published are expensive.