Photo Credit: Veronika Tarakanova
Independent UK music publisher Minds on Fire used Tipalti’s Mass Payments to eliminate invoice-chasing, speed up their international royalty runs, and scale its global roster without growing its finance team. Here’s a peek at how their Tipalti integration has significantly changed their royalty run workflow.
This article was created in collaboration with DMN partner Tipalti.
Music publishing runs on trust. Songwriters need to be paid accurately, on time, and without friction. For Minds on Fire, delivering that experience across an international roster of songwriters used to mean weeks of manual work for every royalty run. Today, with Tipalti’s Mass Payments solution, that same work happens in a matter of hours instead of weeks. Digital Music News spoke with Mariana Maglione, Head of Finance at Minds on Fire, about the shift in the publisher’s workflow following the Tipalti integration.
Before Tipalti, every royalty payment depended on the publisher first collecting an invoice, often through managers and representatives, along with legal names, addresses, bank details, and tax information. As Mariana explains, that dependency was the single biggest obstacle to getting songwriters paid quickly.
“The biggest bottleneck was waiting for invoices and complete payment information,” Mariana shares. “Even when the royalty calculation was ready, we couldn’t release payment until we received the required documents and details.”
The complexity of processing royalty runs multiplied for songs with several co-writers spread across different countries, each with specific banking requirements, currencies, exchange rates, and international transfer fees. A single missing document or detail could stall a writer’s payment.
With Tipalti, that manual document chase has been replaced with a self-service model. Songwriters now complete their payment and tax information up front, so there’s no document wrangling later. Minds on Fire can then act on royalty statements as they’re prepared, eliminating the need to wait for documents before sending payments.
“Songwriters complete their payment and tax information securely through the [Tipalti] portal, and we can raise self-billings and pay them based on their royalty statements without waiting for individual invoices,” Mariana continues.
For international co-writers, the impact is just as significant. Each payee now sees the payment methods and currencies available in their country, giving them more visibility and control over how they get paid. Meanwhile, Minds on Fire manages everything from one central dashboard.
“After each co-writer completes their onboarding through Tipalti, we can monitor everyone’s onboarding and payments status centrally, making international collaborations considerably easier to manage,” Mariana shares with Digital Music News.
Perhaps the most striking measure of impact is speed at scale. Running payments to hundreds of songwriters across multiple countries and currencies used to be a two-week undertaking for the Minds on Fire team. With Tipalti Mass Payments, that timeline has collapsed dramatically.
“A royalty run of that size could take us at least two weeks to complete,” says Mariana. “Tipalti allows us to manage the entire run through one central workflow. What previously took weeks can now be completed within a few hours.”
That efficiency doesn’t just save time; it changes what’s economically viable to payout. Smaller royalty balances that once carried disproportionate administrative overhead and now move through the same streamlined process as larger payments. The benefits of integrating with Tipalti have gone beyond just faster payment processing.
Mariana also points to reduced manual data entry for her team, fewer errors, and tighter security surrounding payment information for everyone involved. “[The shift to Tipalti] has reduced manual data entry, errors, and the exchange of sensitive banking information by email. It has also created a clearer audit trail and reduced the chance of an incomplete onboarding case being overlooked,” says Mariana. “It reduces the administrative burden on both sides. Our writers can focus on creating music, while we can provide a more transparent and professional payment experience.”
That transparency and reliability translate directly into stronger relationships with Minds on Fire songwriters, which is a critical differentiator for an independent publisher competing for talent against larger companies.
“Writers notice quickly if a payment is late or if they don’t understand its status,” says Mariana. “Paying accurately and on time is therefore an important part of building trust between a publisher and its roster. Greater consistency and transparency have reduced uncertainty and follow-up emails. When a songwriter or manager does contact us, we have clearer information available and can respond more quickly.”
Tipalti integration helps Minds on Fire hold a key competitive edge by offering seamless and dependable payments that align with the service quality songwriters anticipate from much larger publishing firms as a result.
The connection between Tipalti and Minds on Fire’s accounting systems has also sharpened financial control, giving the finance team a clearer, more current picture of payee information and payment status at every stage. Perhaps the most compelling business outcome of the integration is what Tipalti has enabled for Minds on Fire’s growth trajectory. As the company’s catalog and international roster have expanded, the finance team has been able to manage the growth without a proportionate increase in administrative workload.
“As our catalog and international roster have grown, Tipalti has let us manage more payees without the same increase in manual administration,” says Mariana. “Self-service onboarding, centralized payment information, and bulk processing mean that growth does not result in a proportionate increase in finance work. This gives our existing team more capacity to focus on reporting, financial controls, and supporting our songwriters.”
For independent publishers like Minds on Fire, the ability to pay a global roster of songwriters quickly, accurately, and with minimal administrative overhead isn’t just an operational nice-to-have; it’s a competitive edge. Tipalti Mass Payments turned a two-week manual royalty run into a process measured in hours, freed the finance team to focus on higher-value work, and gave songwriters the transparent, professional payment experience they expect.
Ready to see what Tipalti Mass Payments could do for your royalty runs? Explore how Tipalti helps publishers, labels, and rights holders pay global talent faster, more accurately, and at scale.