Category: Artist Financial Education

Inside Royalty Audits with Keith Bernstein: Lessons from Chris Castle’s Music Contracts & AI Class at UT Law

Let’s face it: Audit rights are only as good as your auditor.

In this ARI Artist Financial Education session—recorded for Chris Castle’s music business and AI class at the University of Texas School of Law—we got a gem. Keith Bernstein, one of the top royalty auditors in the music business, joins Chris for a practical discussion of DSP and royalty audits. As the force behind Royalty Review Council and Crunch Digital, and its proprietary clearance tool Tempo, Keith has spent decades uncovering how royalties are reported, misreported, and contested.

Keith walks us through how audits actually work, contract limitations on audit rights, where discrepancies tend to surface, and why leverage often matters more than contract language. After decades in the field, Keith has seen where the money goes and where it doesn’t. This conversation cuts through the theory and gets into how audits really work, where the gaps are, and why audit rights only matter if you can enforce them.

Watch the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cirxW12BS2k

Background reading: Donald S. Passman, All You Need to Know About the Music Business 11th Edition, 54–55, 70, 313, 408.

by Trichordist Editor

@hypebot: Jay Gilbert, Ryan Vaughn, & Benji Stein Share Expert Tips for Artist Growth in 2026

Check out a great discussion from our friends at Hypebot: The latest panel from MusicPro ’26 offers a useful snapshot of where “artist growth” advice stands heading into 2026—and where it may still be missing the mark.

In this Hypebot discussion, Jay Gilbert, Ryan Vaughn, and Benji Stein walk through the evolving toolkit for independent artists: data, audience development, and the growing skepticism around social media metrics. The throughline is clear—streams and followers don’t build careers; real fans do. The panel repeatedly returns to the importance of identifying and nurturing “actionable” fans over vanity metrics. 

But the more interesting takeaway may be what sits beneath that advice. As platforms flood artists with data, the real advantage increasingly lies in owning the relationship through email lists, direct engagement, and signals that actually convert into tickets, merch, and sustained attention. (And in our experience, owning the relationship is the one thing Spotify doesn’t want you to do.)

The result is a subtle but important shift: away from platform-defined success, and toward artist-controlled audience infrastructure.

The question, of course, is whether the current system actually rewards that shift—or quietly undermines it.

Read the post on Hypebot

by Trichordist

@JayGilbert Discusses Record Release Marketing Strategies

Our friend and long time music marketing consultant Jay Gilbert sits down with Chris Castle to discuss release planning and strategies on Part 3 of the Artist Rights Institute’s Record Release Checklist. You may have seen Jay on podcasts like Your Morning Coffee, Behind the Setlist (with Glenn Peoples) and Michael Brandvold’s Music Biz Weekly.

Jay discusses his excellent Release Planner and made a copy available for download on the Artist Rights Institute Artist Financial Education vertical. You can also listen to the podcast on The Artist Rights Watch podcast.

Don’t miss Parts 1 and 2 on getting your record ready with legal and business issues available on the Financial Education Vertical here and here and checklist for YouTube videos here.

by Trichordist Editor