Back in the day, a media asset management (MAM) system was a discretionary add-on typically implemented as part of a finished asset repository or archive strategy. As the industry evolved, MAMs became much more reliable, intelligent, efficient, and affordable. In addition to the basic functionality of indexing, metadata tagging, and searching, they now do everything conceivable! These days, MAM has become an essential component for many facilities – touching every part of a project lifecycle from pre- and post-production to transcode, QC, distribution, remote proxy editing, and beyond.