A preview of the new-look Zinfonia (or Zinfonia 2.0 as we are calling it) is now available for Zinfonia publishers and distributors.
The new interface is fast and simple and works on all devices (even your smartphone!)
Please contact us for details how to access the preview.
We plan to release this version in the coming months once we have finished the translations and the supporting in© publisher tools are complete.
Zinfonia was born at the Frankfurt Musikmesse in April, 2009 when four of the world’s most prestigious classical music publishing houses; Boosey & Hawkes, Music Sales (now Wise Music), Peters Edition and Ricordi & Co. partnered with Peter Grimshaw and BTM Innovation (BTMI) to create a website where performers, librarians and academics anywhere in the world could locate and acquire performance materials. Since then, Zinfonia has grown to become a unique and popular repository of information representing more than 115,000 concert music titles by 11,000 composers from 620 imprints serving almost 77,000 users in 147 countries.
Last week, the original publisher partners transferred ownership of their shareholding in the Zinfonia Holdings Pty Ltd company to BTMI, a change that will allow us to integrate Zinfonia into all of BTMI’s suite of offerings created to serve the industry: HLMSW, the UIC, in© and our latest addition Chordata.
This marks the beginning of a considerable investment in Zinfonia to enable significant enhancements through a complete overhaul using the latest technologies. New versions of both Zinfonia and in©, scheduled for early 2024, will demonstrate the power of this new marriage.
Zinfonia will remain as the free central point for customer interaction with an updated, fast, secure and mobile-friendly interface which will offer all of the same features currently enjoyed while in© will become the central hub for publishers to manage their Zinfonia presence, as well as providing other services like paperless contracts, distribution and link management tools. Chordata and HLMSW will continue to work with all of these offerings, and HLMSW users will benefit from the option of new workflows to improve the way you interact with your Zinfonia customers (more on this a little closer to the time).
Stay tuned for lots more Zinfonia news to come.
Recently we have discovered an indexing problem in HLMSW which significantly degrades performance, and we have released a new build of HLMSW (8.01.0.56) which tackles and resolves this issue.
All users should see an immediate benefit from the update especially when working with UICs or printing stock-related information.
The installation process is a little more complicated and time consuming than usual, and so it is one that should only be undertaken with our assistance. All users running a version of HLMSW below this version should contact us at help@hlmsw.com to arrange a suitable time to upgrade your system at your earliest convenience.
We are very happy to announce the launch of Chordata 2.0 which heralds a new direction for music publishers in the management of their assets, IP and metadata.
Chordata has been created specifically for music publishers – using the latest technologies, Chordata’s unique architecture effortlessly manages the complexity of the world of music publishing. In particular, Chordata manages all existing distribution chains with a particular emphasis on emerging digital marketplaces. Chordata is a subscription-based service delivered on the Web. While your data is securely held in the cloud, it is still accessible via the powerful Chordata API which gives you the option to connect your Chordata system directly to any other process or application. To have all your product data and related assets such as music files and contracts not only in one place but also properly connected to each other is only the beginning of your team’s Chordata experience.
While hire/rental functionality in Chordata will be added later in 2023, the system will launch with a direct connection to our HLMSW rental system so that you do not need to maintain more than one database of titles anymore (HLMSW and in© are both included in the Chordata subscription).
Chordata is the centrepiece of our offerings now and into the future working alongside with all of our existing systems HLMSW, In©, Zinfonia and the UIC.
We look forward to taking you on a tour of Chordata in 2023.
The number of companies and systems that use the UIC to help categorise their instrumental parts continues to grow. To ensure we provide the most reliable and speedy access to the UIC data files, we have created a new destination to access the most recent UIC data.
The UIC can now be accessed from here:
If you visit this page you will see the new endpoints for all of the files which now come in both XML and JSON formats. The results have had a few small changes, but you should be able to use these new files without any modifications to your systems.
The files will be checked every day (at 1am UTC) and updated when required.
There is a new file called status.xml/status.json which you can use to check if your data requires an update by saving the LastUpdate value in your systems.
We will be updating all of our programs that use the UIC in the coming weeks to take advantage of the new service.
One of the great successes of the Zinfonia platform is that no matter where your customer is in the globe, their communications are sent direct to the office of the publisher or distributor that will actually handle their requests. To achieve this, Zinfonia provides tools that allow publishers to select distributors on a country-by-country basis from a curated list of publishers and distributors, all of which must agree to participate in the Zinfonia system.
Admittedly, this approach has a number of challenges due to the inherent complexity of the information which is constantly changing – not just the distribution rules but even the maps themselves on which these rules are based. Nevertheless, why should this very useful facility be restricted to JUST Zinfonia?
CinC is a platform where publishers can:
This new service will be used to control the distribution rules for ALL of our products (Zinfonia, HLMSW, Chordata and in©) with simple one-time setup.
We will be contacting all Zinfonia publishers once the service is running so that you can see this in operation yourself.
An update to both Zinfonia and in© over the weekend gives all our publisher partners that use Stripe to collect fees and charges a huge selection of funds for your payments beyond just the credit card.
In Stripe, if you go to the Payment methods section of the Settings dialog or click here: https://dashboard.stripe.com/settings/payment_methods after first selecting Zinfonia or in© from the Select your platform dropdown, you can turn on and off a myriad of payments types which are popular in various countries around the globe. When selected, the payment types you select will automatically appear as an option in your customer’s checkout based upon their country and currency (Stripe automatically selects what is available and what is not).
You can preview the selections using the Preview tab to see how your choices will look on both mobile and desktop. Note: Credit Cards (which cannot be turned off), Google Pay and Apple Pay are the only payment services that are enabled by default.
Some payment services require additional steps to be enabled, and some payment types, particularly Direct Debit types have a built in delay of some days before the funds are available to Stripe and you.
Important note: Zinfonia will mark a transaction as PAID as soon as the customer has completed their side of the transaction whatever payment type is selected, but in© will hold a copyright request as pending until the payment is received by Stripe. If you are allowing indirect payment types in Zinfonia such as Direct Debit, we recommend you institute some method of holding a transaction until those funds are received into your bank.
We have not been able to test all of these payment types and so please let is know if you, or your customers have any issues with these new options.
In HLMSW, the Invoice Due date field is populated by a set of rules that can use EITHER the same day, week or month before or after the Date Sent, First Performance Date or Last Performance Date (the rules for which are set in HLMSW Configuration Editor under the Edit Invoice/Credit Defaults section for the primary company, or under the individual company settings for multi company setups).
In the current build of HLMSW (Build 8.01.0.40) we have improved the way this works so that any changes to the source date will be reflected in the invoice due date automatically (this was not the case previously).
There may be some occasions though when you do NOT want this behaviour to occur, most commonly when you are working with transactions which are have no send by or performance dates (when the invoice due day is set to the same day the transaction is created). If you enter ANY other date in this field, then a little lock symbol will be displayed which means that the Invoice Due date is LOCKED and any other changes will not alter this date.
To remove this lock, all you need to do is either clear the date completely, or click on the lock itself and it will return to the system calculated due date.
This current build also has greater control for some delivery and accounting systems where an email address is mandatory, with a new option to force all accounts and invoice to include an email address now available.
Contact BTMI to arrange an upgrade.
