SCAPR has among its strategic objectives the global development of reciprocity. SCAPR members collect royalties for the usage of sound recordings and audio-visual works in their respective territories. These royalties are distributed to Performers and Producers (for certain members) domestically by each member society, and internationally through agreements signed between them.  The VRDB system provides a centralized system to enable members to more efficiently and accurately identify recordings and works and exchange the Performers’ information necessary to properly run distributions locally. VRDB maximizes the flow of royalties exchanged between the member societies of SCAPR.

Some of the benefits to members using VRDB include:

• Reduce the workload by increasing automation
• Obtain and sharing information early
• Standardize processes
• Agree to a common format
• Increase transparency
• Increase participations
• Increase exchange of revenue cross border
• Reduce costs for rights holders
• Support the development of performance rights management

Concepts

• A common means of clustering recordings or works together which appear to be duplicates of each other
• A central source of accessible repertoire data – global repertoire will be stored and maintained centrally in one place which allows data to be submitted, queried, processed, and extracted for the benefit of all members
• A single version of a recording or a work – a recording or a work will be de-duplicated across countries
• A scalable technical solution – the cross border payments solution is be built upon a scalable technology platform which supports future data volumes and processing requirements globally
• Commonality of matching algorithms and validation – ensuring all participants match usage information/play lists in a similar manner to create commonality of results
• A central repository for usage information/play lists
• Support standardised timing and synchronisation of processes