CuManage

The staff list you inherit the day you run your own service

• Rights managerWhich right, which territory, which term, recording and composition kept apart.
• Metadata engineerIdentifiers that match across every portal, every asset defined before it ships.
• Claims officerEvery claim watched and answered inside each portal’s own window, catalogue-wide.
• Reporting analystHundreds of thousands of statement lines turned into figures a decision can rest on.
• AccountantSplits, withholding, and reserves held against claims that land months later.
• Marketing unitSocial, new SEO, targeted advertising, creators, influencers, KOL.
• Design and videoArtwork, thumbnails, trailers, formats, at release cadence.
• Data analystWhich release, which market, which audience, and what to do next.

Eight functions, permanently staffed. For an independent label, artist or producer the payroll passes the revenue long before the catalogue does.

CuManage is that department, as a system

• Identity that holds up Two granted European patents put a provable identity on the asset itself: EP1684263B1 audio fingerprint and EP1684265B1 digital watermarking, plus the registered Cugate Virtual Barcode (DPMA 30 2023 008 078). A claim gets answered with evidence, not with an assertion.
• Rights and registration Recording and composition handled separately, per territory, cleared before release rather than after. We run our own publishing house, so the composition side is not somebody else’s problem.
• Reporting turned into figures Millions of statement lines from portals that use different identifiers, name assets inconsistently and withhold the consumer detail. CuManage reconciles them into country, age, gender and device, the picture that was obvious when records were sold in shops.
• Money held correctly Reserve logic so revenue that can still be claimed is not settled as final, and claim windows are tracked per portal rather than per assumption.
• Advice that gets measured Every release carries a written recommendation, locked at publication, then compared against the result and corrected. The system proposes market entries from what has already worked in our own catalogue, not from opinion.
• One page per person Channel manager, designer, video producer, marketing: one person, one task, one page, in their reading language, every figure explained where it stands.

Where this leaves Orbit

Orbit changes the reimbursement structure and builds a different relationship between artist and listener. It does not change the control obligation, and it does not remove the eight functions above.

For the first years nobody gives up the exploitation they already have. Labels, artists and producers will run a community-owned service and their existing channels at the same time. Two structures, one catalogue, one set of rights, and one place where all of it has to reconcile. That is the layer we bring, and it works the same under either model.

Availability

• NOW

  channels.cugate.com in production across the 28-channel portfolio, advice loop piloted on Cugate Classics Club.

• DECEMBER 2026

  Own concert video channel launches as a SmartTV application.

• Q4 2026

  Pilot partners outside Cugate, with locked pre-release advice measured against actual results.

• 1 JAN 2027

  General availability for independent labels, producers, artists and small and medium-sized media companies.

Rail-agnostic by design. CuManage competes with neither a distributor nor a community-owned service. It is the department underneath both.

Why we can say this

1,500+

audio productions since 1992, classical, jazz, lounge, new folk

150+

video productions, plus 6,000 albums under own control

28

YouTube channels operated in house

16 yrs

per-track revenue history across territories and formats

We built CuManage because we needed it ourselves, on our own catalogue, against our own reporting. It is in production now. From 1 January 2027 it is open to everyone else who has the same problem and cannot hire eight people to solve it.