What Is a Music CRM?
Definition: A music CRM is a relationship system built around music work rather than sales pipeline. It links each contact to the projects, albums and deliverables that connect you, and decides follow-up timing from the state of that work — a publisher whose album is nearly finished rises above one you simply have not emailed in a while.
A generic CRM ranks a contact by contact fields. A music CRM ranks a publisher higher because the album you owe them is 84% done. That difference is the whole category.
What does a music CRM track that a normal CRM does not?
The field list is where the difference becomes concrete. Alongside the usual name,
email, website, region and time zone, a contact in Kora carries tier, status,
lastContactDate, nextFollowUpDate, lastInteractionSummary, hasSignedTracks,
and a business snapshot holding typical fee range, payment model and currency.
The enums are music-native rather than sales-native:
| Roles (20) | Publisher · Library · Music Library · Sync Agent · Label · Artist · Collaborator · Client · Supervisor · Director · Game Developer · Manager · A&R · Engineer · Playlist Curator · Influencer · Blogger · Myself · Other |
| Tiers | Dream · High Priority · Active · Warm · Dormant |
| Statuses | New · Pitching · Album In Progress · Expects Deliverables · Signing Contracts · In Touch · Strong · Dormant |
| Payment models | Per Track · Per Project · Per Album · Revenue Share |
Three of those statuses — Album In Progress, Expects Deliverables, Signing Contracts — have no equivalent in a sales CRM, because they describe obligations rather than stages of a deal. “Expects Deliverables” is a state you can be in with someone for months, and it is the state most likely to damage a relationship if you lose track of it.
Contacts also carry a business snapshot — typical fee range, payment model, currency — so the commercial shape of a relationship sits alongside its work state rather than in a separate spreadsheet.
How does follow-up timing get decided?
Through an explicit ladder of eight rules, evaluated in order — the first match wins:
| # | Trigger | Suggestion | Urgency |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Opportunity is pitched or in talks | ”Follow up on {title} — status: {status}“ | High |
| 2 | Delivered under 14 days ago, no approval | ”Check on delivery of ‘{x}’ — sent N day(s) ago” | High after 7 days |
| 3 | Ledger marked Needs Changes | ”Address revision request for ‘{x}‘“ | High |
| 4 | nextFollowUpDate has passed | ”Overdue follow-up — last scheduled {date}“ | High |
| 5 | Linked project completed | ”Ready to deliver ‘{name}’ — project completed” | Medium |
| 6 | Linked album over 80% complete | ”Album ‘X’ almost ready — 84% complete” | Low |
| 7 | Last contact over 60 days ago | ”Reconnect — last contacted N days ago” | Medium |
| 8 | Fallback by role | Supervisor → “Follow up on sync placement decision” | Low |
Only rule 7 is the kind of thing a generic CRM can do. Rules 1 through 6 all read from work state — an opportunity, a delivery ledger, a revision request, a project, an album’s completion percentage. Rule 8 falls back to an 18-entry map keyed by role, so a supervisor and a playlist curator get different default suggestions.
Why does work state change a contact’s priority?
Because urgency runs in both directions.
A contact’s overdue follow-up raises the priority score of their linked albums, and
in-flight work on those albums raises the contact’s own score — capped at
min(240, linked pressure × 0.55). Neither is a static field. The publisher you owe
a nearly-finished album climbs your list without you flagging them.
The second structural difference is role-typed relations. Projects and albums carry six typed contact slots — publisher, label, artist, collaborator, client and primary — so one person can be the publisher on album A and a collaborator on project B at the same time, with both relationships true and neither overwriting the other. When a deliverable needs to go somewhere, Kora walks those slots to work out who it is actually for.
A contact can also anchor a Focus session, so studio time is logged against a relationship. Finishing that session offers “Follow-up sent” and sets the next follow-up date without a separate step.
What history can I see per contact?
Deliveries, with limits worth stating plainly: the 10 most recent, and only in Advanced mode.
Two things are not available today, and it would be easy to assume otherwise:
- Version history does not exist. A deliverable file records its name, path, size, checksum and mix type — there is no version number, revision index or per-file date anywhere in the model.
- Logged interactions do not persist. Calls, meetings and pitches you log are held in memory for the session and are lost on reload.
Neither is a limitation of the concept — both are on the list to fix — but this page will not describe Kora as offering full relationship history while that is untrue.
Frequently asked
What is a music CRM?
A music CRM is a relationship system that links contacts to the projects, albums and deliverables connecting you, and decides follow-up timing from the state of that work rather than from a calendar reminder. It models music-specific roles — publisher, library, supervisor, sync agent — instead of generic sales stages.
How is a music CRM different from Salesforce or HubSpot?
Generic CRMs rank a contact by contact fields and pipeline stage. A music CRM ranks by obligation: what you owe someone, how close that work is to done, and whether a delivery is awaiting approval. Kora raises a publisher’s priority because their album is 84% complete — a signal a sales CRM has no way to represent.
Do composers actually need a CRM?
If you work with more than a handful of publishers, libraries or supervisors, the failure mode is not forgetting who they are — it is losing track of what stage each relationship is in. Statuses like “Expects Deliverables” and “Signing Contracts” exist because those are the states where silence costs the most.
Can one contact have more than one role?
Yes. Projects and albums carry six typed contact slots, so the same person can be the publisher on one album and a collaborator on another project simultaneously, with both relationships recorded independently.
Can I record what a client typically pays?
Yes. Each contact carries a business snapshot holding a typical fee range, payment model — per track, per project, per album or revenue share — and currency, so the commercial terms travel with the relationship.
Related pages
- How do I manage multiple clients as a producer?
- What is a music operations system?
- What is workflow infrastructure for creators?
- Kora vs Notion