How to protect digital assets while unlocking new value

A rights and royalties revolution is upon us. Digital streaming maintains its dominance, while we’re witnessing record royalties payouts, including $11bn paid out by Spotify in 2025. The question of how to balance intellectual property (IP) protection with artificial intelligence (AI) innovation continues to loom large over the creative industries, with policy in the UK remaining unsettled. The UK Government recently revised its previously favoured stance on AI and copyright, following backlash from major artists, confirming it no longer backs a system where AI developers could train models on copyrighted works. 

These examples all paint a picture of an industry at a crossroads. From navigating new competitive dynamics to managing unparalleled licensing complexities, content and media organisations face challenge and change on multiple fronts. Organisations must act now to maximise and protect their IP, or they risk losing control of content, audiences, and revenues. 

In the new media landscape, organisations face a battle on three fronts. They must maximise the value of IP to continue growing revenues, find more effective ways to process that IP whilst introducing the right protections to safeguard their IP. Some of the most pressing challenges in this space include: 

• Changing commercial partnerships. Partnerships are increasingly the engine behind content success to enhance creative diversity, unlock new markets and revenue streams, and drive omnichannel and franchise strategy. It’s more important than ever for media organisations to establish alliances with partners who truly understand their audience and verticals, and can amplify their IP 

• Monetisation evolves. Licensing opportunities are expanding significantly as new platforms and products emerge. The latter are powering innovative uses of content, including premium, technology-enabled, immersive, personalised experiences and ecosystems. This creates more avenues for rights holders to monetise their intellectual property through diverse, omnichannel licensing models and partnerships 

• Creators demanding more. A more empowered creator economy is fuelling fresh demand for greater transparency and control over IP. Today's creators, who are seeking to build an authentic follower base and drive stronger returns, expect detailed insights into how their content is distributed and consumed, including real-time access to usage, audience, and revenue data 

• Exploding copyright complexity. Managing copyright data is growing increasingly complex as buying and selling drive constant shifts in IP ownership, while firms still lack centralised, consistent frameworks for handling rights and agreement information. Changing dynamics require more sophisticated tracking, rights management, and legal oversight mechanisms 

• Rising threats to security. As use of AI explodes, protecting IP has become a prime concern. Large-scale scraping of copyrighted material to train AI models has led to a rise in derivative works, often without clear permissions for rights holders. Organisations need updated licensing frameworks, as well as monitoring and enforcement mechanisms, that balance innovation with fair use and transparency 

• The race for AI advantage. AI is driving new efficiencies across the value chain, both in the back-office, where it’s being harnessed to automate contract processing, archiving, and other workflows, to front-line engagement, powering more personalised and interactive content. Those who can effectively leverage AI stand to significantly improve insight and reduce manual effort, elevating their operational agility, accuracy, and scalability to gain a crucial competitive edge. 

Protecting digital in a new era 

With traditional IP models under huge pressure from digitally-driven change, organisations need new ways to safeguard content ecosystems while accelerating revenue growth and operational efficiency.  

We’ve built Baringa's Protect in Digital offering to address this reality head-on, informed by our deep experience of optimising across the entire IP value chain. Whether it’s shaping content acquisition strategy or managing royalties, we empower organisations with proven strategic, operating model, and delivery expertise while helping define and develop the right supporting tools, skills, and capabilities. 

Together with our clients, we apply a three-dimensional approach that empowers IP owners to maximise the potential of their assets, harness innovation, and deliver value to consumers and rightsholders whilst building resilience against digital threats: 

1. IP strategy: Unlocking growth, pricing, partners, and acquisitions 

How do you shape an IP strategy that drives maximum commercial success and opportunity for your business? We help clients to identify, plan, and access the full potential of their IP and media assets by: 

• Understanding markets, rights, and models to sharpen forecasting and IP strategy 

• Optimising licensing structures and aligning IP to market demand, now and in the future 

• Understanding and analysing IP value, pricing, and margin, including AI-generated IP 

• Developing and engaging new partnerships and alliances 

• Supporting IP and content acquisitions, from integration to post-deal value realisation.  

2. IP operations: Optimising processes, technology, and digital 

How do you ensure you’re supporting IP operations in the most effective and cost-efficient ways? We help clients to design, optimise, and technologically enable IP operations by: 

• Optimising rights management processes and streamlining operations,  

• Modernising technology platforms and embedding automation to enhance control, reduce complexity, and unlock new value across the IP lifecycle 

• Scoping, selecting, and applying AI solutions to better safeguard IP and deliver strategic outcomes 

• Transforming data and analytics to unlock improved business intelligence and deeper insights for IP owners and licensees. 

3. IP risk: Next-gen governance, controls, and infrastructure 

How do you protect IP to minimise risk and build trust with your audiences and contributors? We help clients to safeguard IP and media assets against digital risks and threats by: 

• Reviewing and strengthening the cybersecurity landscape and threat response 

• Establishing robust governance frameworks and proactive risk management approaches to protect asset value, audience and contributor trust, and operational integrity 

• Modernising contract strategies to incorporate AI usage clauses and account for changing regulations 

• Optimising IT infrastructure, protocols, and security parameters to better protect IP and deliver strategic outcomes. 
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Why Baringa 

Baringa brings wide-ranging and longstanding experience in the world of media and IP. We've built an extensive track record across rights and royalties work that few can match, delivering transformations at scale for some of the world's leading media organisations. Through this depth and breadth of engagement, we've encountered and solved a full spectrum of challenges, from the technical complexities of royalty management systems to the strategic implications of evolving licensing models. 

Our data and AI capability has been independently recognised, earning us Consultancy of the Year at the 2025 British Data Awards. We've also contributed to the broader industry conversation through proprietary research on AI in the creative industries and the future of rights and royalties, helping shape how organisations worldwide approach these critical areas. 

How we show up matters just as much as what we deliver. Our teams work hand-in-hand with yours, offering an impartial perspective grounded in honesty. This collaborative, candid approach ensures that the strategies we develop together are ones you can truly own and sustain long after our engagement ends.