Remember back in the olden days when individual items were hand-priced in the store with a sticker gun, and that price was entered into the register by hand before you could take it home with you? Receipts were a ticker tape of numbers and codes, with no item individual descriptions, colors, etc.

Thanks to the humble little barcode, we can now track purchases, inventory, and consumer behavior in the blink of an eye.

That's the principle behind RADKey, a new music barcode fingerprinting system designed for micro-sync music licenses used in random online 'stores' like YouTube.

At the SXSW panel “Micro-Licensing: The Fast Growing Future of Sync”, Rumblefish slam-dunked the panel's topic by revealing the brilliant online service and throwing the music licensing world into warp speed.

“It’s like a music license ‘barcode’ that lets video creators use licensed music in their videos and easily monetize that video or block ads, all while fairly compensating artists,” said Rumblefish CEO Paul Anthony Troiano ahead of the event. “The RADKey enables YouTube to ‘read’ complex music licenses, making it easy for anyone to use licensed music in a YouTube video.”

At present, even legitimately licensed work can get yanked by YouTube's piracy patrol.

By automating dialogue between intricate music license registrations and YouTube's patrolling software, RADKey keeps the minutia of micro music licensing humming along. And music creators odds of making extra cash through monetization increases.

Or not--RADKey also gives artists and copyright holders total control over whether their music is monetized with advertising.

Tech-savvy SESAC recent bought Rumblefish, cleverly whisking the PRO to the micro-licensing trend's front lines.