Onboarding to Revelator Pro

Whether you are using Revelator for distribution or not, your catalog must exist in our system in order to use our Reporting and Royalties workflows. Revelator has integrations with some of the industry’s largest aggregators, including CI, FUGA and AudioSalad, so you can easily deliver your data and keep your catalog in sync. If you don't use CI or FUGA as a supply chain partner, you may be able to import your metadata and assets (audio & cover art) directly into our platform by using our Catalog Ingestion Worksheet.

CI/FUGA/AudioSalad

CI

The following outlines the steps needed to deliver your catalog from CI to Revelator:

1. Request that CI set up a feed to Revelator
2. CI will contact Revelator to coordinate and notify you when you can begin your deliveries

FUGA

Here are the steps needed to deliver your catalog from FUGA to Revelator:

1. Contact your FUGA Account Manager to open a feed to Revelator
2. FUGA will contact Revelator to coordinate and notify you when you can begin your deliveries

AudioSalad

Here are the steps needed to deliver your catalog from AudioSalad to Revelator:

1. Contact your AudioSalad Account Manager to open a feed to Revelator
2. AudioSalad will contact Revelator to coordinate and notify you when you can begin your deliveries

Catalog ingestion options

If you are not able to deliver your catalog via DDEX or through one of our Supply Chain partners (such as AudioSalad, CI, FUGA, and in some cases DashGo or Ingrooves), our team will work with you to determine the best ingestion workflow for your catalog.

Depending on your setup, onboarding can be handled in several ways:

AI-assisted catalog ingestion

You can provide the metadata and assets you currently have available, and our team will process the catalog through our ingestion workflow. If any updates or corrections are needed, we will provide guidance during the process.

Manual recreation in Revelator Pro

Your catalog can also be recreated manually, directly within the Revelator platform.

API ingestion (API and Enterprise clients)

API and Enterprise clients may also ingest catalog directly via the Revelator API.

Setting up your supply chain and migration

Once your catalog has been ingested, it must be re-delivered to the different DSPs according to how you set up your Supply Chain.

Setting up your supply chain

You can deliver your catalog in Revelator Pro through our deals with the DSPs, your own Merlin or direct deals, or a combination of these. When onboarding, you'll use our Distribution Deals Worksheet to tell us:

• Which deal you’ll be using for each DSP
• If you already have catalog delivered to a DSP, please prepare a list of the corresponding UPCs per DSP

Switching distributors

Once your catalog has been ingested into Revelator and your Distribution Deals Worksheet is filled out, please coordinate with our team to begin the migration process.

Switching licensor to Merlin/direct deals

If you are switching from third-party aggregator deals with DSPs (FUGA, CI, AudioSalad, Believe, Orchard, etc.) to delivering under your own Merlin deals, please keep the below process in mind.

Once you have been approved as a Merlin member, we need to obtain confirmation from all the Merlin DSPs that you are opted in before we can begin deliveries for you. This is the protocol set by Merlin and the DSPs. Note that some DSPs can be slow to confirm: you should expect it to take 7-10 days before they all do. In some cases, certain DSPs can take up to one month to confirm, despite us following up constantly. If it starts to take longer than expected, we'll enable a first wave of Merlin DSPs so that you're not blocked from distributing for too long.

Ingesting client accounts and royalty splits

To generate statements and manage royalty reporting for your rights holders, they must be added as Payees through Contracts in your Revelator account.

Client accounts and royalty structures can be created manually within Revelator or imported in bulk via CSV during onboarding.

Typical onboarding information includes:

• Account name
• Email address
• Payout rate

Our team will guide you through the appropriate onboarding workflow based on your account structure and setup.

Understanding contracts

Our Contracts feature defines how the revenue your catalog generates on the DSPs is split between your company and your different Payees. The Contract structure is as follows:

Terms

The Terms define the Payout Rate from you to your Payees. You can define different and multiple Terms per DSP, Territory, Channel and Format. For example:

Payees

The payout revenue after your Terms can be divided amongst different Payees/Collaborators. You’ll define the following in our Contracts Worksheet:

• Their login email address
• Their PayPal email address (optional)
• Their corresponding share %
• Their initial balance (can be positive or negative)
• Depending on the type of account you have (see Parent-Child and Standalone below), your Payees will be created either as:
  • Distribution Payees: These are the owners of a Child Account, and have special permissions to create Releases and push them for Distribution.
  • Payee Portals: On a Standalone setup, only you as Account Owner and your Team Members can create Releases and push them for Distribution. In this case, Payees are invited to Payee Portals, with View (not Edit) permissions to see their Assets and view their Statements, Analytics and the Distribution Status of their Assets. A Parent-Child account can also have Payee Portals for Payees that don’t create or manage Catalog/Distribution.

Assets

Finally, you will define which Assets the Terms and splits of the Contract will be applied to. This can be:

• Account Level: see Parent-Child setup below
• Label Level: applied to all Assets of a specific Label
• Artist Level: applied to all Assets of a specific Artist
• Release Level: applied only to specific Release(s) of an Artist/Label
• Track Level: applied only to specific Track(s) of an Artist/Label

For Parent-Child accounts

If your account is set up as Parent-Child, this means that Release creation and Distribution workflows are offloaded to the owner of each Child Account.

Account Level Contract

An Account Level Contract is created for each Child Account, in which the owner of the account is set up as a Distribution Payee, and the Default Terms of this Contract apply to all catalog under the Child Account.

Label/Artist/Release/Track Level Contracts

To ingest royalty splits at a more specific level than the Account Level Contract, you should also input Label/Artist/Release/Track Level Contracts, which will overwrite the Account Level Contract for the specific Assets defined in the Contract. Please review the sample data pre-filled in our Contracts Worksheet for reference.

White Label customisation

To set up the White Label customisations of your account, we will create a task management board to coordinate the different tasks, since there are some actions you need to take on your end before we can apply the corresponding configurations in our backend:

Custom domains

You’ll need to create CNAME records in the DNS settings of your hosting/domain provider for the subdomains you’ll be using. Once you let us know these subdomains have been added with their corresponding CNAME records, we will connect them in the backend.

Branding images and logos

You can set this up directly in your Revelator dashboard under Account Settings → Identity and Branding.

Color scheme

You will indicate which color you want, which will be applied to your Login/Sign-up page as well as to the different action buttons in your dashboard. You can indicate a Primary Color and a separate color for Dark Mode. We will then deploy these in the backend.

Login/Sign-up page

You can modify the text shown on your Login/Sign-up page as follows:

• Login/Signup browser tab title
• Login page header text
• Login page subheader text
• Signup page header text
• Signup page subheader text

External site or dashboard link

If you are on an Enterprise plan, you can add an additional menu in your dashboard pointing to any URL you provide.

Email setup

In order for our system to send emails with your branding and using your domain, we need to create the custom templates and authenticate your domain in the backend.

Custom email templates

Once you have set up your branding images and logos, color scheme, and custom domains, you’ll need to:

1. Indicate the email address and name that will be used in the emails (EmailFromAddress and EmailFromName)
2. With this information, we will generate your custom email templates for your review. You’ll then let us know of any changes to be applied, and we’ll upload the templates to our database once they have been approved
3. Afterwards, you’ll need to add DKIM and SPF settings to the MX records with your DNS provider/domain registrar so emails don't immediately get blocked or flagged as spam. Our team will help you by providing the values to be added
4. Once the DKIM and SPF configurations are correctly added, we will send an authentication email to an active/existing address under your company domain

User support

You can point your users to your own Support and FAQ:

• FAQ section: URL or email address
• Help section: URL or email address (can be the same as FAQ)
• IntercomAppId (optional)

User policies

You can have your own custom Distribution Policy and Privacy/Terms of Use Policy. These will be hosted as PDF files.