Following months of testing and development, today (December 9) sees the official beta launch of the Creative Passport, a new initiative founded by award-winning artist Imogen Heap aimed at enabling artists to better update, manage and share information about themselves.

Hailed by Heap as a service that will provide music makers with a “sustainable and flourishing future”, the Creative Passport, which is free for artists, is designed to allow users to have their data verified and compiled in one place, offering complete control over how and where they are represented online and who can access their data.

Among the first organisations to get involved with the Creative Passport is music licensing company PPL, whose performer members will be able to verify their membership and integrate their International Performer Number (IPN) into their own Creative Passport. When it accompanies information about their credits it will ensure that they are properly identified on recordings they have performed on and can be paid correctly. 

The Creative Passport is powered by identity verification platform Yoti to ensure users have a secure way of sharing their details with individuals and third-party services.

“It is beyond exciting, if slightly terrifying, to birth the Open Beta launch of the Creative Passport into the world,” said Heap. “After five years of boiling it down to the core of what Music Makers need to combat the irks and frustrations we experience daily in our industry, we now need a huge leap of faith from hundreds of thousands of music makers globally to bring about the next stage for real change. We are now primed to be the indispensably useful and outrageously organised force that the industry needs for a sustainable and flourishing future. We have countless people to thank, including everyone who has worked on developing it, with a special mention to the PPL and Yoti which have the foresight to embrace what we are trying to do at this embryonic stage.”   

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Carlotta De Ninni, Creative Passport CEO, commented: “We are thrilled that today we are in a position where we can bring our product to market in beta, something that we have been working hard to do for many months. At a time when business opportunities are limited because of the Coronavirus pandemic, enabling music makers to own and better manage their data in an easy way has become even more important. With ongoing discussions happening with other third-party service providers interested in plugging into the Creative Passport, combined with constant feedback from artists, we are very much looking forward to making this the industry-leading premium digital identity tool for the creative industry.” 

Peter Leathem, PPL Chief Executive Officer, added: “By working with Creative Passport to provide this functionality, we are enabling PPL performers to retrieve their unique, verified International Performer Number into their Creative Passport, so that it can be associated with their credits as they flow through the digital supply chain. We hope that this will help them maximise their income from their creative work, be that through royalty payments or by reaching new audiences. We are proud to partner with Creative Passport and support their drive to empower performers.”     

“We’re delighted to partner with the Creative Passport,” commented Robin Tombs CEO, Yoti “Yoti’s privacy by design approach, powering the Creative Passport, enables artists from around the world to verify their identity just once then access a range of important services. Yoti is an award-winning ID for the digital world, making it faster, simpler and safer for people to prove their identity with a tap of a button. We accept ID documents from 185 countries, making the partnership with the Creative Passport a global offering providing utility to artists and efficiency to music businesses”.