🎯 Project Purpose
Roya investigates whether royalty metadata, ownership splits, and chain‑of‑title information can be verified before publishers submit works to collecting societies.
The goal is to understand whether upstream validation can:
- reduce manual handling
- minimize avoidable rejections
- improve metadata quality
- increase transparency for rights holders
This is a research prototype, not a commercial product.
📉 Industry Challenges
The project focuses on well‑known issues in the Swedish publishing ecosystem:
- Lack of transparency — rights holders cannot easily verify how royalties are calculated
- Manual verification — publishers and societies spend significant time correcting metadata
- System fragmentation — inconsistent formats across the royalty chain
- High administrative costs — reconciliation and dispute resolution require substantial resources
- Processing delays — metadata issues slow down registration and distribution
🔍 Scope of the Prototype
The prototype evaluates:
- Metadata verification (split integrity, identifiers, roles, chain‑of‑title)
- Mathematical validation of ownership shares
- Generation of audit‑ready execution references
- Simulation of payment‑instruction workflows (testnet only)
- Publisher‑facing documentation (Metadata Health Reports)
- Feedback collection from publishers and industry stakeholders
All activity occurs in a controlled test environment with synthetic or publisher‑provided non‑production data.
⛔ Out of Scope
To avoid any misunderstanding:
- ❌ No custody of funds
- ❌ No real payment execution
- ❌ No bank or financial data
- ❌ No PSD2‑regulated activity
- ❌ No production integrations
- ❌ No changes to PRO systems
- ❌ No replacement of PRO workflows
- ❌ No processing of live royalty data
Roya is a verification layer, not a payment service.
⚖️ Compliance & Risk Mitigation
The prototype is designed with strict boundaries:
📜 Regulatory considerations
- PSD2 — Roya does not initiate or process payments
- GDPR — data minimization, privacy‑by‑design, and sandbox‑only processing
- Financial regulation — clear separation from regulated financial activities
- Industry standards — alignment with CWR, DDEX, and Nordic metadata conventions
⚠️ Risk Management
- Technical risks — isolated testnet, no production access
- Operational risks — strict scope boundaries
- Compliance risks — ongoing legal review
- Reputational risks — transparent communication with stakeholders
🛠️ Technology Overview
The prototype uses a testnet‑based registry to store verification references.
This enables:
- auditability
- reproducibility
- interoperability
- safe experimentation without exposing sensitive data
All verification logic is open for review and designed to integrate with existing publisher workflows.
🧱 Technical Stack
- Frontend: Modern web (HTML5, CSS3, JS)
- Backend: Microservices architecture
- Storage: Encrypted, access‑controlled data stores
- APIs: RESTful interfaces
- Security: Industry‑standard encryption and isolation
🔄 Development Approach
- Iterative development with publisher feedback
- Test‑driven development for verification logic
- Documentation‑first approach
- Open review of architecture and code
📊 Evaluation Status
The prototype is currently in a controlled evaluation phase and is used only for:
- technical assessment
- metadata quality analysis
- usability testing
- industry feedback
- compliance review
No production data or financial flows are involved.
📍 Current Phase
- Technical evaluation
- Usability testing
- Industry review
- Compliance assessment
🚀 Next Steps
- Limited pilot with selected publishers
- Feature refinement based on feedback
- Integration testing (testnet only)
- Preparation for potential limited production trials
✨ Prototype Clarifications — Roya
To ensure full clarity:
- We are not asking PRO to change any workflow
- We are not integrating with PRO systems
- We are not replacing any part of PRO’s process
- We are not offering a product or service to PRO
- We are not processing payments
- We are not touching financial flows
Roya is a metadata verification prototype, nothing more.
📌 About the Pilot
Participating publishers use their own metadata in a sandbox environment to evaluate:
- how metadata issues appear before registration
- how pre‑validation affects data quality
- how much manual work can be reduced
- which documentation is most useful
All processing occurs in a controlled environment:
- ✅ No production data is sent anywhere
- ✅ No financial transactions occur
- ✅ No bank or payment information is used
- ✅ No changes are made to publisher or PRO systems
🤝 Communication with PRO
Because PRO is a central stakeholder in the Swedish publishing ecosystem, we maintain:
- 🔹 transparency about the pilot
- 🔹 clarity about scope and limitations
- 🔹 open communication channels
- 🔹 opportunities for feedback
This ensures the research remains aligned with industry needs.
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