Project overview

Stage approached Vigil seeking to develop a long term relationship with a reliable and knowledgeable software engineering partner to rapidly scale their delivery capability and build out their eco-system of digital tools to revolutionise the music industry.

Before we engaged in any engineering tasks, Vigil and Stage worked closely to establish an effective collaboration model allowing both parties to fully understand each other’s strengths. The objective is to understand the business challenges, the tech environment and the varied project needs.

The relationship has grown quickly with Vigil’s software engineers becoming key team players with an in depth overview of infrastructure and architecture as we work across the platform on various projects.

“Vigil people are problem-solvers. They’re engaged, motivated and proactive and they instinctively hunt for better ways to achieve results. They don’t necessarily have to be specifically tasked with something, they regularly come up with ideas independently. This attitude is invaluable for us.”

Dominic Blatchford – Stage CTO

About the client

Stage is a consultancy that builds tech solutions for the music industry. One of the main purposes of its products is to guarantee that everyone involved in a music creation gets recognised for their work and financially rewarded.

Session, one of the products on the Stage platform, is founded by Swedish songwriter and producer, Nicolas Molinder, and backed by Björn Ulvaeus and songwriter Max Martin. The platform is a collaborative place for song production with credit management for producers, songwriters and musicians, making sure that those participating in the creation of music product are permanently tagged in that piece, ensuring the people are paid and credited.

Also in collaboration with the largest collective rights management organisation in the music industry Stage and Vigil works to make sure royalties are collected whenever music is played internationally.

Challenges and solutions

Historically, it’s been challenging to allocate music rights equitably to performers and contributors. Even in the case of music rights organisations with proprietary tech solutions, systems are often unable to keep up with the technology changes and streaming platforms that have impacted the music industry.

To address these challenges, Vigil and Stage established an effective collaboration model to understand each other’s strengths, technical requirements, and the music industry domain. Vigil’s expertise in agile hiring allowed them to identify and onboard talented software engineers saving valuable time on management processes and allowed Stage to focus on their business objectives.

Thanks to the partnership between Stage and Vigil, contributors from all around the world can now be assured of recognition for their work, ensuring they are paid and credited.