Digital Data Exchange, LLC (DDEX) is a not-for-profit, membership standards organisation that was formed in 2006, and is focused on the creation of digital music value chain standards. The Rightscom team was instrumental in supporting and project managing the creation and launch of DDEX. The Rightscom team continue to provide full secretarial and technical support to the work of DDEX and have proved to be significant contributors to DDEX’s success.

DDEX was established by a consortium of leading music companies, music licensing organisations, rights owners, digital service providers and technical intermediaries. Since then the membership has grown from right across the digital music ecosystem throughout the world. As such, DDEX is the only music industry organisation that has a membership spanning every sector of the industry.

The first members of DDEX realised that the legal digital music industry needed to adopt standards related to the way it communicated information about works, tracks and products (including ownership and sales information). Known as metadata, this information needed to be communicated in a common format and then delivered between companies in a common way so that each party receiving the metadata could understand it.

Therefore, to support the automated exchange of information along the digital music value chain, DDEX standardised the formats in which information is represented in messages and the method by which the messages are exchanged between business partners. These standards are developed and made available for free for industry-wide implementation. DDEX now plays a critical role in the development of the digital music value chain as more and more companies recognise the vital importance of standardisation. The number of DDEX members has increased significantly and now stands at over 140 with new companies joining almost every month. DDEX standards are developed in accordance with a well-defined and well-tested process. This process addresses the need for standards to be stable and properly peer-reviewed while operating in an ever-faster changing commercial environment. It also ensures that everyone’s voice is heard and that no single or group of organisation(s) can exert undue influence over the development of the standards.