Rights, residuals and reconciliation: the case for a more agile approach

When a distribution partner doesn’t manage residuals, the job falls back on the studio. In my conversations with studios, the same three options come up again and again. Engage a specialist agency, whose minimum fees can feel excessive for only one or two titles. Deploy enterprise-grade, specialist software, which feels like overkill. Or hire headcount to do it all manually.

There are no easy answers. If the distributor doesn’t do it – and many don’t – then the studio, broadcaster or streamer carries a complex and long-running administrative burden.

Rights and residuals, a problem that just keeps growing

The complexity is increasing. A single title can trigger dozens of residual formulas over its life, varying by guild, territory, window and medium. With the major guild agreements now settled, the pressure has moved to the back office: paying the right people the right amount at the right time.

Content no longer travels in straight lines. There are newer models of FAST, AVOD and SVOD. Libraries are placed with aggregators and curated into themed channels, while full episodes and short clips appear across YouTube, TikTok and a growing list of newer platforms. Each sends its own statement in its own format in its own time, and the data is often incomplete.

Even a clip featuring one chat-show host and a single guest is often tracked back to the whole title. But the rights need to follow the content down to this more granular level, otherwise money goes to the wrong place or doesn’t arrive at all.

Where the existing tools fall short

The established rights management platforms are mature, capable and built for the enterprise. However, they are also large, demanding to deploy and separate from the payment flows themselves. That is where the disconnect happens, and reconciliation becomes a nightmare. When a payment goes missing, you first have to discover it’s missing. Sometimes it’s a statement that never arrived. Then it falls to the accounting team to piece together what went wrong.

A different approach

Our experience at Centtrip suggests a different approach. We have spent the past year building a collection account and waterfall management solution for independent film and TV. We also have a deep knowledge of music royalties and payments. Together, those point to a simpler model: one environment, powered by a proprietary LLM trained on over 30 years of data, that holds the rights, builds the waterfall from the underlying agreements, receives revenue, checks it against what was expected, flags mismatches, and pays residuals out across currencies and borders.

Because it sits on our own payments and FX platform, there is no gap between the system that knows what is owed and the account that holds the funds. Reconciliation that once meant weeks of manual work can happen automatically, quickly and securely, with a full audit trail.

And it’s flexible. A studio with a straightforward catalogue can keep things simple. One with multi-tiered IP – where a soundtrack carries its own rights and residuals within the wider waterfall – can take the detail as deep as it needs, even down to individual chat-show clips. It’s within your gift to decide how granular you want to go. The solution fits the need, not the other way round.

In a nutshell, Centtrip Rights, Residuals and Reconciliation can:

·       Ingest any platform statement

·       Run the waterfall

·       Pay the right people.

Looking ahead, the complexity compounds

Microdramas, made quickly on modest budgets and released in volume across multiple platforms, generate many titles, many statements and many small payments.

As founder and CEO of Curzon, Philip Knatchbull, said at the recent Screen Summit 2026 event, “AI will democratise creativity.” That means many more, and often much smaller rights-holders, all to be managed and paid out correctly and cost-effectively.

These are scenarios where heavyweight systems will struggle and where a newer, lighter and more agile, AI-powered solution will win out.

I’m in Cannes for MIPCOM with the Centtrip team until 14 October. If you’re here too, and you’d like to compare notes on managing rights and residuals, send me a message at sarah.gooding@centtrip.com. I’d love to meet for coffee and a chat.