Rolling Stone: Fake Streams Could Be Costing Artists $300 Million a Year
The easiest version of streaming manipulation to stop might be the most obvious one: fake albums. The distribution platforms the Orchard, CD Baby and Distrokid all recently partnered with Audible Magic, which bills itself as “the leader in automated content identification of audio and visual content,” to ensure that music they push out to streaming services is legitimate. “There’s a small minority of bad actors trying to game the system,” Audible Magic CEO Vance Ikezoye is quoted in Rolling Stone.
Audible Magic Inks Global Partnership with DistroKid to Verify Music Authenticity
Amidst news of unreleased music impersonators, partnership ensures protection of artist’s original content on music streaming services and social platforms
June 12, 2019 (LOS GATOS, Calif.) – Audible Magic, music’s industry standard for content identification linked to digital rights, announced a strategic partnership with leading music distribution service DistroKid to combat the rising trend of “fraudulent artists” stealing and uploading unreleased original content. The move will help protect artists worldwide by verifying the authenticity of both tracks and artists that the music originated from before music is distributed to streaming services.
When an artist requests to upload song files via DistroKid, Audible Magic’s RightsRx™ solution checks its comprehensive registry of over 20 million media assets to ensure the artist-uploaded content is conflict-free before distribution to streaming services like Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube and more. In its ongoing effort to promote artist authenticity, DistroKid will also be the first distributor to implement Audible Magic’s cutting-edge detection tool, Broad Spectrum. An extension of Audible Magic’s content identification service, Broad Spectrum can uniquely identify extreme manipulations of rate, pitch and tempo using only small clips of audio.
“In this day and age, it’s imperative for artists everywhere to register their content to not only claim ownership, avoiding impersonators, but to also ensure that they are being accurately credited and compensated,” said Vance Ikezoye, president and chief executive officer at Audible Magic. “DistroKid has a positive reputation amongst artists for making distribution fast, reliable and easy. This partnership signals our joint commitment to an industry working towards clean data, proper rights management and improved artist attribution.”
Additionally, in response to the increase in fake artists attempts to steal and distribute unreleased music, DistroKid is announcing a new and free service called DistroLock (https://distrolock.com). Launching today, DistroLock allows any musical artist to upload and register their unreleased audio files through the platform, which will encode a unique audio fingerprint and add it to Audible Magic’s registry. DistroKid developed this platform with Audible Magic’s insights as an industry-wide solution that will request to block the unauthorized release of an artist’s music (or “leaks”) from appearing on streaming services and social platforms. DistroLock also includes an API that will allow other distributors and streaming services to easily validate the authenticity of music uploaded to their respective platforms before making it available to the public.
“Until now, there hasn’t been a definitive way for artists to say, ‘this is my audio, don’t let anyone else release it,’” said DistroKid chief executive officer Philip Kaplan. “With the launch of DistroLock, any musician can preemptively register their
audio to help ensure that unauthorized releases don’t see the light of day. This partnership with Audible Magic and the creation of DistroLock will help artists by ensuring that their original content is uploaded and distributed fairly, with accuracy and speed.”
About DistroKid
DistroKid was founded in 2013 to provide musicians, managers, and record labels with online tools and services that are innovative, easy-to-use, and affordable. More than 400,000 artists rely on DistroKid and include hobbyists, up-and-coming musicians, top YouTubers, and international superstars like 21 Savage, Ludacris, Will Smith, Tom Waits, and more. DistroKid’s expanding array of services include music distribution, monetization, metadata customization, storage, and promotion. DistroKid’s small staff, coupled with largely automated backend, has enabled DistroKid to process more than 7 million songs—while simultaneously providing fast, personal & friendly customer service to artists of every size.
About Audible Magic
For more than 20 years, Audible Magic has continuously created innovative, industry-leading solutions that protect digital media and accelerate its monetization. An Emmy-winning pioneer in proprietary content recognition solutions, its core identification platform performs billions of nearly instantaneous content match transactions every month. Audible Magic has become the trusted intermediary between the majority of rightsholders (music labels, distributors, publishers and collectives) and digital service providers (such as Facebook, SoundCloud, Dailymotion, and Twitch), navigating the complexities of content identification, ownership determination, and rights administration.
Apple's & Spotify's Distributor Tiers Raise the bar for Catalog Management
Audible Magic Offers New Services to Manage Distribution Conflicts
In 2018, the top digital service providers (DSPs) publicized their preferred distribution partners and their ranking criteria. For Apple, whose ranking criteria includes exceptional content review" and "low rejection rate," CD Baby and The Orchard made the "Preferred Plus" list. For Spotify, whose criteria lists "preventing infringement content," The Orchard made the "Preferred" list while CD Baby made the various "Recommended" partner lists.
a 9.2% increase over 2017 - Buzz Angle
The challenge of adhering to these strict DSP guidelines while the keeping pace with the huge growth in the space is daunting for digital distributors. Digital distributors must manage current catalogs and ingest large numbers of tracks every day in an efficient and cost-effective way. Buzz Angle Music’s 2018 report on U.S. music consumption indicated that the number of unique titles audio-streamed was 36.3M tracks, a 9.2% increase over 2017. The sheer number of tracks eliminates manual review and metadata checks prove to be unreliable.
As a result, digital distributors use automated content recognition (ACR) technologies to scan new releases, as well as their back catalog, to ensure they can meet these strict content review requirements. A distributor can improve their overall score and ranking if they can deliver a clean catalog that doesn’t create a lot of copyright ownership conflicts at a DSP. The impact on their business is significant. For example, as an Apple Music Preferred Plus distributor a company will have access to support for advanced customer features and analytics as well as early access to product features.
Audible Magic’s newly launched services, RightsAudit™ and RightsRx™ are a great cost-effective way to proactively identify potential ownership conflicts prior to delivering to a DSP. Audible Magic’s ACR technology combined with one of the most comprehensive and most up-to-date reference databases in the world provides a highly accurate and method to compare audio and video recordings.
Learn more about The Orchard and CD Baby partnering with Audible Magic for catalog management.
CD Baby and Audible Magic Team Up to Ensure Quality Partnership with Artists and Music Services
Portland, Oregon, (April 16, 2019) – Artist Service Provider CD Baby is partnering with Audible Magic – the music industry’s go-to expert in digital content identification, licensing, and monetization – to increase content protection for artists and labels. As part of the partnership, CD Baby will use Audible Magic’s RightsRx™ service to identify content rights conflicts prior to delivery to a Digital Service Provider (DSP), ensuring that CD Baby remains a trusted distribution partner of digital platforms worldwide.
As streaming continues to grow exponentially, both companies are at the center of one of the music business’s greatest opportunities and biggest challenges: How do distributors and artist service companies concurrently manage growing data volumes, comply with DSP requirements, and still provide the best service to musicians, all in a cost-effective manner?
“Audible Magic is an essential element that enables us to play our role in the music business,” said CD Baby Vice President Kevin Breuner. “Their powerful identification technology allows us to serve our artists – and the platforms and services they rely on – quickly and fairly.”
When a user requests to upload files, RightsRx™ allows CD Baby to check Audible Magic’s comprehensive registry of over 30 million media assets. RightsRx™then indicates if the file is a duplicate of another audio track in the system, or if it is a potentially suspicious file. CD Baby can proactively decline to upload the file in question, rather than reactively taking it down at a later time due to a potentially costly rights conflict. In the vast majority of cases, however, files will upload seamlessly and be ready for distribution.
“CD Baby plays a vital role in the independent music community. We look forward to supporting their ongoing efforts to provide the highest quality of service to their artists and maintain strong relationships with the DSPs,” said Vance Ikezoye, President and CEO at Audible Magic.
RightsRx™ is part of a bigger strategy at CD Baby to be the best partner possible to diverse music services and an even more diverse community of artists. This demands constant learning, extensive tech savvy, and real creativity.
“We’re doing everything in our power to provide digital partners with data and assets that boost our artists. We want to create the best experience via these partnerships,” said MJ Woodis, CD Baby’s Director of Digital Operations who leads a 15-person team that addresses this challenge. “We work closely with DSPs, and it’s often more of a conversation, not just rules laid down. The heart of the matter is not to restrict as we get them music and data, and to enable search and other discovery methods to help our artists. It’s a growing process.”
About CD Baby
CD Baby is one of the largest distributors of independent music on the planet, home to 650,000 artists and more than 9 million tracks that are made available to 100+ digital services and platforms around the globe. Artists on the platform are empowered to monetize their rights while maintaining control of their own careers and have collectively earned over $600 million since the company’s founding. CD Baby’s Publishing Administration service allows over 160,000 songwriters to collect all of their publishing royalties and currently administers over 1 million songs.
About Audible Magic
For more than 20 years, Audible Magic has continuously created innovative, industry-leading solutions that protect digital media and accelerate its monetization. An Emmy-winning pioneer in proprietary content recognition solutions, its core identification platform performs billions of nearly instantaneous content match transactions every month. Audible Magic has become the trusted intermediary between the majority of rightsholders (music labels, distributors, publishers and collectives) and digital service providers (such as Facebook, SoundCloud, Dailymotion, and Twitch), navigating the complexities of content identification, ownership determination, and rights administration.
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The Orchard Partners with Audible Magic to Address Industry-wide Problem of Verifying Music Rights Ownership
Audible Magic Announces Two Services to Impede Improper Distribution of Music
Los Gatos, Calif., (February 26, 2019) – Audible Magic announced two new services, RightsAudit™, and RightsRx™ to address the industry-wide problem of distribution conflicts between rights owners and their respective music catalogs. As the world’s leading music and video distribution company, The Orchard has long recognized Audible Magic’s value and trusts them to strengthen their well-versed rights management procedures.
The process for music distributors to verify rights ownership across more than 200 territories before new music is added to a catalog is complex and extremely challenging. Both Audible Magic’s services dramatically simplify the determination of a conflict. The service will identify a whole track or clips from that track that have been registered by other rights holders in any territory. A conflict exists if a match is found both with the audio of the underlying sound recording and more than one rights owner has registered that content in the same territory.
Audible Magic’s, industry-leading, Emmy award-winning, content recognition technology performs a deep analysis that reveals conflicts often in small clips of music audio. Audible Magic’s catalog contains rights ownership information on over 25 million music tracks.
Both services are monthly subscriptions and can easily fit with a company’s content management system and existing workflows. RightsRx™ is an entry-level lower cost version of RightsAudit™.
“We are excited to offer these two services to begin to address a significant industry-wide problem, in an easy and cost-effective way,” said Vance Ikezoye, President and CEO at Audible Magic.
“Audible Magic’s tools provide a huge service to us. Rights management is an essential part of the business and it is important to make sure artists and labels are getting the revenue they deserve,” said Tucker McCrady, EVP & General Counsel at The Orchard.
Learn more about RightsAudit™ and RightsRx™.
About Audible Magic
Founded in 1999, Audible Magic is an Emmy award-winning, trusted software, and services company enabling the efficient and accurate management of copyright compliance and licensing in the music and entertainment industries. Audible Magic’s robust, scalable solutions enable digital service providers such as Facebook, Vimeo and DailyMotion hosting user-generated content to proactively and in real time to identify and comply to often complex right’s holder requirements. As an independent third-party vendor with 20 years of expertise in copyright compliance, Audible Magic is meeting the needs of the rapidly growing user-generated content hosting and streaming entities. For more about Audible Magic visit. www.audiblemagic.com.
About The Orchard
The Orchard is a leading music distribution company operating in over 40 markets worldwide. With a comprehensive artist & label services offering including full-service marketing, sync licensing, comprehensive video services, transparent data analysis, advertising, rights management, digital and physical distribution and more, The Orchard empowers creators and businesses to grow and adapt in the dynamic global industry. For further information, visit www.theorchard.com.
Press Contact
Audible Magic Corporation
Julia Hutchinson
EU in Final Stages of Clarifying Copyright Law for User Generated Content Platforms
The European Union is nearing finalization of significant changes to the copyright law, which will increase the legal obligations of websites and apps that allow sharing of user-uploaded content, often referred to as UGC or user-generated content. While it is still progressing through the legislative process, it seems likely some form of this legislation will become law. The three current versions approved by separate arms of the EU government share a few common provisions.
If it becomes law, it will likely apply to websites and app platforms that meet four basic conditions:
First, the platform allows the storing and distribution of UGC that may include copyright content, even if use is just incidental. If users can upload content with embedded clips of music or video as part of their content, this provision applies.
Second, the platform promotes or optimizes content for commercial purposes. Commercial purposes would include the generation of income through advertising, subscriptions, app and in-app purchases, and other creative income producing schemes, or attracting users to the service to increase the capital value of the platform.
Third, the platform is located in the EU or if it is located outside of the EU, is it accessible by users from any of the 28 countries currently in the EU. That means if the platform is based in the US but allows users in the EU to access it, this law applies.
Fourth, the platform is above a certain size, currently proposed to be more than 50 employees or annual revenues in excess of €10 million.
Some exceptions to the type of platforms covered are expected. For example, cloud storage services that are for individual use. Other examples include not-for-profit encyclopedia services (such as Wikipedia), open source software platforms (such as GitHub) and online markets whose main activity is selling of physical goods (such as eBay).
If a platform falls under these qualifying conditions of the directive, then what? The company will be required to obtain licenses from copyright owners or must take preventive measures to ensure that copyright works are not available through their service. Since there are inconsistencies between the three versions, it’s not yet clear what will qualify as a preventive requirement. However, it is expected that copyright owners will be obligated to specify what content they want protected.
So where do things go from here?
A trilogue process is currently underway by the EU to reconcile the three different approved versions. A compromise version is expected to be finalized before the end of 2018 and approved in the first quarter of 2019. Once approved, there is a two-year period before it becomes law in every EU member state.
Audible Magic Launches AMLive™ to Protect Against Rebroadcasting Premium Content by Users of Live Streaming Platforms
Los Gatos, CA (April 3, 2018) — Audible Magic Corporation, the leader in audio and video digital content identification solutions, announced today the availability of AMLive — a new service to identify unauthorized user streams of premium content registered by rights holders. The service addresses industry needs to protect live sports, live-broadcasted music and other premium content. AMLive operates on both live streams and video-on-demand.
Using a simple dashboard or via an API to integrate into existing workflows, AMLive makes it easy for broadcasters and programmers to register live broadcast events. Once content is registered with Audible Magic, the social platforms can automatically identify and block unauthorized streams in real-time.
“Content owners can now more easily ensure their valuable content is available only from authorized streaming services.” said Vance Ikezoye, Co-founder and CEO of Audible Magic. “AMLive is well suited for the live sports industry, where piracy of live streams is a major concern. The service also addresses a growing issue where recorded music is streamed live by bedroom DJs.”
“What makes Audible Magic unique in the industry is we provide a service used and paid for by the social platforms to proactively prevent the unauthorized distribution of copyrighted content. The social platforms then make the service available to any content owner who wants to register content they own or control. AMLive enables greater cooperation between the social platforms and the content industry.”
Audible Magic is recognized for its pioneering work in audio and video digital fingerprinting, the foundation behind its content recognition technology, and is a trusted provider among both platforms and rights owners. With the launch of AMLive, Audible Magic expands its portfolio beyond video-on-demand (VOD) services.
Audible Magic will be discussing AMLive and other recent developments with content owners and OVSPs at the National Association of Broadcasters show in Las Vegas, April 9-11. Please contact [email protected] to schedule a meeting.
Additional information on AMLive can be found at http://bit.ly/ampr318
Audible Magic Honored With an Emmy® Award for Content Identification Technology
Audible Magic Honored with an Emmy® Award for the Company's Content Identification Technology
Los Gatos, CA (August 30, 2017) — Audible Magic has been recognized as one of a select few to be honored with the Emmy® Award for Technology and Engineering in 2017 by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS). The internationally-renowned Emmy® Award, granted by NATAS and chosen each year by dozens of industry experts and peers, recognizes excellence and creativity; and represents the highest achievement in the television industry.
Audible Magic was recognized by the NATAS for the company's more than 18 years of pioneering work in the development and use of content identification technologies to protect content value and copyright. The company's content recognition solutions, which are based on its patented digital fingerprinting technology, quickly and cost-effectively detect authorized and unauthorized uses of live and pre-recorded television content shared by consumers on social media and live streaming platforms.
"The Academy is pleased to highlight Audible Magic's contributions to the television industry addressing the need to respect television media copyrights on the Internet," said Robert P. Seidel, Chairman of the Technology & Engineering Committee of the NATAS. "Audible Magic's technology has had a significant positive impact in protecting the value of television content."
"Recognition by the NATAS and to be honored with an Emmy® Award is not only testimony to the extraordinary contribution of our technology but in addition, the entire ecosystem we've created," said Vance Ikezoye, Founder and CEO, Audible Magic. "Audible Magic has over 18 years developed industry-advancing technologies, resulting in over 65 patents covering a broad range of inventions in content identification."
This year’s recipients will be honored at the 69th Annual Technology & Engineering Emmy® Awards that will take place in partnership with the NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) Show/conference on Sunday, April 8, 2018 in Las Vegas, NV.
About Audible Magic
Audible Magic provides technologies that make media devices, apps and networks content aware. The company is the trusted leader in digital fingerprinting techniques that recognize audio and video content in all forms across radio and television broadcasts, Internet streams, cable and satellite transmissions, stored digital files, and on consumer devices such as smart TVs, set-top boxes, smart phones, tablets, and other appliances. Since its founding in 1999, the company has been awarded more than 65 patents. Currently Audible Magic has worked with more than 200 customers and thousands of content partners in technology, entertainment and media industries.
About The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences
The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (NATAS) is a service organization dedicated to the advancement of the arts and sciences of television and the promotion of creative leadership for artistic, educational and technical achievements within the television industry. It recognizes excellence in television with the coveted Emmy® Award for News & Documentary, Sports, Daytime Entertainment, Daytime Creative Arts & Entertainment, Public & Community Service, and Technology & Engineering. NATAS membership consists of over 15,000 broadcast and media professionals represented in 19 regional chapters across the country. Beyond awards, NATAS has extensive educational programs including Regional Student Television and its Student Award for Excellence for outstanding journalistic work by high school students, as well as scholarships, publications, and major activities for both industry professionals and the viewing public. For more information, please visit the website at www.emmyonline.tvw.emmyonline.tv
Audible Magic Triumphs Over Blue Spike LLC in Patent Lawsuit
Audible Magic Leads Defense That Included 19 of its Customers
Los Gatos, CA (July 14th, 2016) — Audible Magic Corporation, the leader in digital fingerprinting and automated content recognition (ACR) solutions, announced that the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas granted summary judgment of non-infringement in favor of Audible Magic on patent claims brought by Blue Spike.
Audible Magic also announced a settlement with Blue Spike to dismiss all outstanding claims and counterclaims between the parties. As part of that settlement, Blue Spike has agreed not to sue Audible Magic or any of its customers again for sales or use of Audible Magic’s products or services. This settlement also dismissed Blue Spike’s claims against Audible Magic’s 19 customers named in the original lawsuit.
“Audible Magic took immediate charge in leading the defense of itself and all its customers named in the suit, including Dailymotion. The company went above and beyond our expectations on this matter, which speaks to their character as a trusted partner,” said Giuseppe de Martino, Executive Vice President and Directeur Général Délégué at Dailymotion. “Obviously we are pleased with the outcome of this suit,” he added.
“Defending our customers and ourselves against these intellectual property related lawsuits is an arduous and costly process, but our trusted role in the industry demands an assertive response.” said Vance Ikezoye, Co-founder and CEO of Audible Magic. “We want our customers and strategic partners to have confidence in Audible Magic’s technology and know that the Company will actively defend their interests.”
About Audible Magic Audible Magic provides technologies that make media devices, apps and networks content aware. The company is the trusted leader in digital fingerprinting techniques that recognize audio and video content in all forms across radio and television broadcasts, Internet streams, cable and satellite transmissions, stored digital files, and on consumer devices such as smart TVs, set-top boxes, smart phones, tablets, and other appliances. Since its founding in 1999, the company has been awarded more than 33 patents in the U.S. and in Europe. Currently Audible Magic works with more than 200 customers and partners in technology, entertainment and media.
Audible Magic Introduces Upgraded DMCA Tool for Colleges and Universities
CopySense® Appliance 10G Automates DMCA Notice Reduction for Campus IT Networks
Los Gatos, Calif., February 3, 2015--(Business Wire)--Audible Magic, the leading provider of enterprise-class content recognition solutions announced the CopySense® Network Appliance 10G. This is a new version of Audible Magic’s CopySense Appliance that now accommodates a 10 GB network interface.
The CopySense Appliance is popular with college and university IT organizations for its ability to reduce workload and expenses related to Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notices. It also automates actions that educate students and other campus network users toward good digital citizenship with regard to the use and sharing of copyrighted content.
With a CopySense Appliance monitoring the campus network, users that engage peer-to-peer (P2P) networks to download or share copyrighted media content get automatically redirected to information on campus network use policies. These responses are only initiated when the user attempts copyright-infringing, public sharing of media content. Sharing of non-copyrighted files on P2P networks is ignored, thus allowing the campus to embrace and allow P2P file sharing for non-infringing uses.
As users become educated and stop participating in public sharing of copyrighted media, the number of DMCA infractions is reduced. The institution then spends less resource following up on takedown notices.
“The CopySense Appliance has helped top educational institutions large and small across the United States reduce their DMCA takedown notice workload,” said Vance Ikezoye, Audible Magic CEO. “The latest 10G version helps them keep up with their growing network bandwidth requirements.”
Visit Audible Magic’s website for more information on the CopySense Network Appliance.
Audible Magic is the trusted leader in automatic content recognition (ACR) fingerprinting technologies. The company offers a broad range of hosted solutions as well as hardware and software products that identify audio and video content, synchronize actions between media devices, trigger user interactivity and generate usage reporting. Audible Magic’s customers and partners span education, technology and media industries and include industry leaders such as Dailymotion, Deluxe Media, Ensequence, Sling Media, Sony Music and SoundCloud.