HitPiece Officially Launches Music Artist NFT Platform and Announces First-of-its-Kind Partnership with Audible Magic to Ensure Authentic Experiences
Music NFT marketplace gaining popularity inks deals with a number of leading artists, including ATL Jacob, Lil Gotit, Lil Gnar, Matt Ox
PROVO, UTAH – August 10, 2022 – HitPiece, the easiest place to create and buy authentic music artist NFTs, has officially launched its platform out of beta. In addition, the company - to protect creators and other rights holders and demonstrate their commitment to authenticity - has announced a first-of-its-kind partnership with Audible Magic, the leader in identifying music rights that enable music use by social media platforms, NFT marketplaces, metaverses, and gaming applications.
The new integration with Audible Magic marks the first of its kind music NFT and Web 3.0 partnership incorporating automated identification services to determine ownership and related rights. Audible Magic’s RightsRx™ service compares uploaded audio to its authoritative content registry of more than 25 million media assets from the creators, music labels and publishers. HitPiece will use Audible Magic’s identification technology to help verify ownership of new music prior to minting of an NFT; thus ensuring only legitimate content is distributed. Audible Magic identifies content so creators can focus on maximizing Web 3.0’s new revenue and engagement opportunities rather than losing earnings to fraudulent sellers.
“We’re excited to join the rapidly growing innovative NFT, Metaverse and Web 3.0 marketplace with HitPiece to continue our commitment to protecting creator rights,” said Vance Ikezoye, President and CEO of Audible Magic. “Through our extensive music registry, music creators and related rights holders on and off HitPiece can be assured the content they own is protected; or monetized where permission has been granted.”
“Following many positive conversations with artists, we’re excited to launch the official HitPiece platform to provide creators with a new way to engage with fans and build metaverse communities,” said Rory Felton, CEO and co-founder of HitPiece and music industry veteran. “As someone who has seen every corner of the industry, too often creators are not in control of how and when they can release content. NFTs for music artists will continue to expand, and we’re grateful for partners like Audible Magic who help us ensure we have guardrails to provide an easy and secure one-stop shop for those in the music community joining the expanding world of Web3.”
Felton co-founded The Militia Group in 2000, a record label that Sony invested in and later acquired the major assets of. In 2021, he co-founded HitPiece to create an NFT marketplace that allowed music creators to easily mint digital assets and build the future of Web3 communities. Built for crypto first-timers, music artists/owners, and music fans, the platform makes NFTs simple to collect and show off, while providing a channel for artists to enjoy exclusive engagement opportunities with their fanbases. Once artists sign up and are verified, they are granted access to their own portal and page where they can upload creative content and control the minting, release, and utility of their NFTs. Fans can purchase NFTs from their favorite music creators to get access to exclusive experiences and content, including music, as well as show off their fandom in their own ultimate metaverse music room.
Since the end of the beta phase, HitPiece has collaborated and finalized deals with dozens of creators including ATL Jacob, who recently topped Billboard’s Hot 100 Producers and Songwriters Charts. In addition to providing artists with their own page, the HitPiece team also guides creators and their teams through the creative ideation process, collaborating with them on launch timeline, marketing strategies, and community development initiatives in channels such as Discord.
“In music, Web3 has significant potential to be a catalyst for increasing artistic integrity, control, and engagement for any musician, no matter their reach,” said ATL Jacob. “I’m grateful to partner with organizations like HitPiece that understand the business first-hand and put hardworking creators first, and I hope the rest of the industry continues to follow suit.”
Creators can register with HitPiece now to begin minting and selling their NFT collections. Fans can connect to the marketplace with their private metamask wallet for their favorite artists’ digital content and exclusive experiences at www.hitpiece.com. Additional wallet integrations to be announced in the future.
About HitPiece
HitPiece is a Web3 software that enables rights holders to sell and mint NFTs. Created by a team of music and blockchain experts, HitPiece is a conduit between the communities of collectors of NFT’s and artists. All NFT’s for sale on HitPiece are authentic and official straight from the creators, unlocking a new way for artists to engage with their fanbases and create a layer of community ownership. For more information or to begin using your cryptocurrency wallet to purchase exclusive experiences, access, content and more, visit https://www.hitpiece.com.
About Audible Magic
For more than 20 years, Audible Magic has innovated solutions to identify content, provide fulfillment solutions, manage rights, and monetize media. Audible Magic’s Emmy-winning automatic content recognition (ACR) technology powers billions of monthly transactions. The Silicon Valley pioneer is the trusted intermediary between major platforms and rights holders (including labels, studios, distributors, publishers, and collectives). For more information, visit https://www.audiblemagic.com/.
Maximize the Value of Licensed Music
Our everyday online experiences would not be the same without music as a backdrop. Whether it is another dance challenge on a social network, the latest concert on a gaming platform, or a challenging online spin class, these experiences are better with music.
The market is experiencing a convergence of services as platforms strive to capture users’ attention and build a community. In this dynamic online market, we see platforms changing formats from short-form to long-form content, offering experiences such as live-streaming concerts that are beyond their original mission and expanding into new territories as their user base grows. Music use is converging with social media platforms now licensing music while music streaming platforms are enabling UGC uploads.
As a key part of a platform’s offering, a music catalog becomes an important asset and is integral to a platform's current and future success. There are several steps that will help a company maximize its catalog.
- First, a platform will want to clear as many tracks as possible.
- Second, the company will need to monitor music use to identify usage trends and understand what additional music, such as a new genre, it may need.
- Finally, a platform will need to build strong relationships with rightsholders by consistently meeting contractual obligations.
The mechanics of managing a catalog can be complex. While some platforms keep catalog management in-house, most turn to vendors for assistance.
Key Hiring Decisions: Identification, Fulfillment and Rights Administration
Once a platform obtains licenses, whether for user-generated content, fitness, gaming or music listening, the next critical phase is to hire one or more vendors to enable the mechanics of the licenses, and power the music experience for the end-user. This includes the identification of songs to know which tracks are allowed or not in UGC uploads (Identification); the delivery of cleared, licensed music to the end-users (Fulfillment); and the tracking, reporting and royalty payments for use of licensed music (Rights Administration).
Hiring these vendors is a crucial step that can impact:
- The breadth of music available
- Building trust with labels, publishers and CMOs, especially timely and accurate royalty payments
- Quickly expanding territories coverage for the service
- Ensuring new releases are quickly cleared and available
The Advantage of a Single-Vendor Solution for Fulfillment and Rights Administration
Platforms often use multiple vendors. This solution can work. However, there is an advantage to using a single vendor with established relationships that is responsible for both receiving and reconciling multiple data streams from unrelated data sources including labels, publishers, PROs, and CMOs; and traversing the complexities of tracking, reporting and payments.
For UGC-hosting platforms, having an identification vendor along with fulfillment and rights administration in one vendor adds to the ease of managing data, reconciliation, reporting, and payment.
If there are issues clearing tracks, site owners will avoid having to coordinate between multiple vendors to find a resolution. A delay or lack of resolution may result in fewer tracks being available to end-users and the challenge of reconciliation and clearance only increases as a platform’s catalog grows and expands into new territories.
Insights into the Catalog
A strong vendor will also provide insights into the constant changes that happen with a catalog at the operational delivery and the business level, including new songs, restricted artists, and territory changes. Offering additional insights like providing a list of new releases that are relevant to the platform’s end users.
Finally, an experienced rights administrator will produce accurate and timely reporting to meet each rightsholder’s requirements across multiple territories and parties. This solidifies a positive working relationship between rightsholders and the platform and sets the stage for future licensing opportunities.
Audible Magic Offers a Suite of Integrated Services to Manage Music
- Licensing Support – Understand what is cleared and not cleared
- Fulfillment – Deliver cleared music to your platform now
- Content Identification – ID and track music on your platform
- Royalty Administration and Payment – Report royalties and pay labels, publishers, CMOs and PROs
Contact us to learn more about how we offer a single vendor solution for managing music on music-hosting platforms.
Bolo Indya Partners with Audible Magic to Manage Licensed and Unlicensed Use of Music
New Delhi, 21 July, 2021: Bolo Indya, India’s first home-grown and most preferred social live-streaming platform, announced that it has partnered with Audible Magic, the leading provider of rights management and identification solutions. The partnership allows Bolo Indya to proactively manage both occurrences of licensed and unlicensed copyrighted media on their site.
Bolo Indya needed an identification service known for accuracy, ease of use and offered an extensive registry of music from around the world, including native music. Bolo Indya worked with Audible Magic to quickly deploy the scalable identification service to respond to the explosive growth in live streaming and short-form videos on their site.
Commenting on the development Varun Saxena - CEO and Founder, Bolo Indya said: “We are committed to providing industry-leading copyright solutions for user-generated content on our platform. This expanded solution will use Audible Magic’s robust technology to support the compliance and licensing of user-generated content on our platform. We are delighted to partner with Audible Magic to help us achieve our goal.”
Bolo Indya is the first of its kind indigenous live streaming platform and is off to a blazing start with a new redemption method, dual live streaming, and other features. Bolo Live, the live streaming capability by Bolo Indya has been embraced by many renowned organizations and personalities since its launch. In the past few months, the platform has witnessed some special moments on Live, including informational talks about COVID-19 by health experts, Hon’ble Prime Minister Narendra Modi talking to thousands of viewers through MannKiBaat, Ministry of AYUSH hosting International Yoga Day Live on Bolo Indya, interviews with celebrities, and record-breaking viewership.
Audible Magic provides proven solutions for platforms to protect their brand’s reputation while using music in user-generated content, streaming, radio, and downloads. Platforms can speed time to market by avoiding building the extensive systems needed to identify content, manage licenses, and ensure they meet their reporting and payment obligations.
Vance Ikezoye, President and CEO at Audible Magic: “We are pleased to help Bolo Indya to identify licensed and unlicensed use of copyrighted music proactively. The partnership leverages our strength in content identification technology, coupled with the trust we’ve built with rights holders.”
About Audible Magic
For more than 20 years, Audible Magic has innovated solutions to identify content, provide fulfillment solutions, manage rights, and monetize media. Audible Magic’s Emmy-winning automatic content recognition (ACR) technology powers billions of monthly transactions. The Silicon Valley pioneer is the trusted intermediary between major platforms and rightsholders (including labels, studios, distributors, publishers, and collectives). The company works with a wide range of platforms and rights holders, including Facebook, Twitch, SoundCloud, Dailymotion, Vimeo, NBC Universal, Universal Music Group, Sony Music Group, Warner Music Group, The Orchard, CDBaby, and DistroKid. For more information, visit audiblemagic.com .
About Bolo Indya
Bolo Indya is the fastest-growing social live streaming platform. Bolo Indya stands unique as it works towards empowering the next billion internet users of India, by allowing them to transform their social capital and virality into financial independence by unlimited earning every month. It brings to the table the amalgamation of short videos, local languages, UGC as a driver, and Passion economy as the fuel for empowering the internet users of Bharat, taking the penetration of peer-to-peer financial transactions to tier 2 and tier 3 cities of India.
The Bolo-Live streaming feature comes with an integrated real-time gamification in the form of a gifting option where creators can be rewarded by their follower base basis the content quality, density as well as engagement which can be redeemed in cash on the Bolo Indya platform.
Vydia Strikes Agreement with Audible Magic, Partnership Allows Independent Creators to Join World’s Most Extensive B2B Music Catalog
As part of Audible Magic’s ongoing mission to help platforms access music for their users, Audible Magic recently announced its partnership with the global music technology platform, Vydia. The partnership with Vydia allows Audible Magic to expand its catalog of new music to its customers such as social networks, gaming, and fitness platforms.
Vydia brings a library of top talent from independent artists from all over the world, including Five Finger Death Punch, Russ, Akon, and Kanye’s Sunday Service Choir. In addition, the platform offers a white label service, currently utilized by nearly 40 labels all over the world, with a list that continues to expand globally. With a vision to provide the infrastructure and tools to power the business of music, adding Audible Magic to Vydia’s ongoing list of distribution channels will further enable discovery and engagement opportunities for creators while maintaining the correct metadata and licensing.
Audible Magic provides platforms with a fully integrated solution for music management, including licensing, fulfillment, rights administration, and content identification. The company hosts the largest business-to-business rights-managed catalog with over 100 million tracks.
On the partnership, Vydia’s Head of Strategic Partnerships, Jenna Tirico Nilsen says "We're thrilled to be partnering with Audible Magic to help them achieve their aim of providing breakthrough music solutions around the world. We are delighted to be a part of their efforts to develop products that solve the demands of the ever-changing music and entertainment industry."
“We are excited to work with Vydia to provide new opportunities for their artists,” commented Vance Ikezoye, Chief Executive Officer of Audible Magic. “Access to great music is key for our customers as they build compelling user experiences to grow their audiences, whether it is for an exercise class, a social media post, or a gaming experience. We are happy to enable that to happen through our fulfillment and rights management services.”
About Vydia:
Vydia is an end-to-end music technology platform and services company that provides labels with the infrastructure and tools to power their business. With a full suite of services, Vydia offers video and audio supply chain, global distribution, analytics, rights management, payments, detailed revenue reporting, and white label services. Vydia is a partner of leading digital service providers such as Spotify, Apple, TikTok, Vevo, YouTube, and Facebook. Combining innovative technology with industry expertise, Vydia is distribution reimagined.
About Audible Magic:
For more than 20 years, Audible Magic has innovated solutions to identify content, provide fulfillment solutions, manage rights, and monetize media. Audible Magic’s Emmy-winning automatic content recognition (ACR) technology powers billions of monthly transactions. The Silicon Valley pioneer is the trusted intermediary between major platforms and rights holders (including labels, studios, distributors, publishers, and collectives). For more information, visit https://www.audiblemagic.com/.
Audible Magic Sponsors 22nd International Society for Music Information Retrieval (ISMIR) Conference
Los Gatos, Calif. — Nov. 5, 2021 — Audible Magic, the industry leader in automatic content recognition, proudly supports the continued research of music identification by sponsoring the International Society for Music Information Retrieval (ISMIR) Conference. This event is the world’s leading research forum on processing, searching, organizing, and accessing music-related data, and will be held online this year from November 8-12.
The ISMIR Conference provides academic and commercial research teams an opportunity to share the latest advancements in artificial intelligence and neural network solutions to identify music and retrieve related metadata. Recognizing the importance of the ISMIR organization, our research team has often presented at and participated in the conference and values interacting with the members. The ISMIR community stays at the leading edge of development, and Audible Magic is excited to support its efforts at this forum.
“As platforms such as social networks, fitness apps, and gaming platforms push the boundaries of how they use music, our research team continues to expand the capabilities of identification technology to meet their needs,” said Todd McGee, Vice President of Research and Development at Audible Magic. “The ISMIR conference is a great place to exchange ideas and new findings.”
As a leading player in the identification space with over 50 patents, Audible Magic continues to innovate. The company now offers platforms an integrated music management solution that includes media fulfillment, rights administration, and its Emmy award-winning identification services.
About Audible Magic
For more than 20 years, Audible Magic has innovated solutions to identify content, provide fulfillment solutions, manage rights, and monetize media. Audible Magic’s Emmy-winning automatic content recognition (ACR) technology powers billions of monthly transactions. The Silicon Valley pioneer is the trusted intermediary between major platforms and rightsholders (including labels, studios, distributors, publishers, and collectives). The company works with a wide range of platforms and rights holders, including Facebook, Twitch, SoundCloud, Dailymotion, ShareChat, Vimeo, NBC Universal, Universal Music Group, Sony Music Group, Warner Music Group, The Orchard, CDBaby, and DistroKid. For more information, visit https://www.audiblemagic.com/.
Why is Music Such a Challenge for the Fitness App Industry?
The burgeoning Fitness App industry offers incredible workout experiences and a sense of community, but integrating music poses unique technical and licensing challenges.
The health and fitness app industry is growing leaps and bounds, with some predictions putting the market at US$ 18.7 billion by 2030. The growth is driven not only by better real-time data and equipment, but the worldwide pandemic is driving consumers to find a quality workout at home.
Combining high-quality equipment with classes is now a given for companies like Echelon, Hydrow, and CLMBR. These platforms strive to expand their offerings to their fan base with additional classes on and off the equipment - think yoga, strength training, and Pilates.
Instructors with a worldwide reach on these platforms are gaining almost cult followings. Participants accessing either a web streaming or an on-demand class expect an experience that delivers a workout and a sense of community and emotional connection.
Music: Got to have it
The underpinning of the experience is music. It sets the mood, drives the workout, and becomes part of the instructor’s brand. Class reviewers talk equally about the instructor and their choice of music-many reviewing the playlist before choosing a class.
Instructors who understand this build their class around music, whether it is an hour of EDM, 80s greats, or Miley Cyrus. A large catalog of premium music enables continued class creation and engagement. Recognizing this new vertical for music, record labels are partnering with platforms to create remixes and break new artists.
So, accessing music for these platforms is key to their business. The challenge is getting licenses and handling the overhead of administering the licenses.
Licensing: Infrastructure, Infrastructure, and More Infrastructure!
One of the first major hurdles that a platform needs to consider when approaching record labels is proof of technical competency.
Record labels and publishers want assurance that the platform can effectively manage their catalogs while also reporting and paying accurately. Unfortunately, these systems take a lot of licensing expertise, time, and technical resources to build.
The quickest way to move licensing negotiations forward is to partner with an experienced and full-service digital music management vendor before engagement. This service provider will often have the trust of the record labels, access to the masters, sub-licenses, and proven systems for:
- Receiving the music and continuous updates from the labels
- Identifying content to ensure appropriate use
- Linking the sound recording to the musical composition to clear tracks for use, and ensuring proper payment to the publisher(s)
- Reporting and Payments
Very few will provide all those functions, but those who do will make vendor management a lot simpler.
Licenses for Live Streaming and On-Demand
Generally, fitness platforms provide live-streamed classes which may or may not be stored, and they offer on-demand classes. Therefore, in consultation with a music industry expert or lawyer, these platforms will need to obtain appropriate licenses from labels, publishers, and collective management organizations (CMOs) covering the territories they will operate in.
Once they have secured licenses, the platform will have technical and service requirements to ensure only licensed tracks are used and to meet their ongoing licensing obligations as listed below:
- Establish an extensive catalog with matched sound recordings to musical compositions
- Host an approved catalog for use by instructors
- Identify licensed and unlicensed tracks using content identification technology
- Reporting, royalty administration, and payments to rights holders
It is hard enough to administer hundreds of thousands, and in some cases millions of tracks, but the difficulty increases trying to keep up with the continuous changes in catalog ownership. Platforms will need to identify tracks in their current on-demand classes and possibly replace songs when ownership has changed.
One can see that a platform hosting both live-streaming and on-demand classes will have many licensing obligations and will need a partner to help manage the process.
Let Audible Magic Help Manage Music on Your Platform
Audible Magic enables platforms to focus on growing their business by providing world-class proven music management solutions, including:
- Licensing Support - Understand what is cleared and not cleared.
- Fulfillment - Deliver cleared music to your platform now
- Content Identification - ID & track music on your platform
- Royalty Administration and Payment – Royalty reporting and payment to labels, publishers, CMOs and PROs
This blog is issued for informational purposes only and is not intended to be construed or used as general legal advice.
Audible Magic Surpasses 100 Million Tracks
Audible Magic the First to Surpass 100 Million Music Tracks
Comprehensive rights-managed music catalog supports streaming, download, fitness, UGC, and other branded services
Los Gatos, Calif. – Feb. 23, 2021 – Audible Magic announced their rights-managed catalog has surpassed 100 million tracks, a first in the space. This milestone gives Audible Magic the largest business-to-business rights-managed catalog available.
The impressive catalog, which contains tracks from over 400,000 labels, is part of the long-established MediaNet content fulfillment and rights administration business purchased by Audible Magic in January 2021. Audible Magic is now the leading provider of content identification, licensing, media fulfillment, and rights administration services to digital music and social media platforms.
The catalog is a result of close relationships with record labels and publishers built over 20+ years of successfully launching music services around the world. It also required the development of a sophisticated rights management platform to take account of the constant changes in rights ownership, and the accelerating numbers of new tracks being released. In 2020 alone, Audible Magic saw a 67% increase in new releases added to their catalog, ingesting, on average, 12,000 new albums every day. This is a massive undertaking and is unmatched in the industry.
Coupled with a 100M tracks catalog, digital platforms can access a variety of Audible Magic’s turnkey music licensing solutions for a variety of services including fitness applications, short-form video, streaming, and downloads. Additionally, Audible Magic’s flexible solutions enable platforms to leverage their own licenses as well as Audible Magic’s pass-through licenses when applicable.
“We are excited to offer an exhaustive music catalog that provides tracks from major and indie labels across an array of territories throughout the globe,” said Vance Ikezoye, chief executive officer of Audible Magic. “Coupled with our services, our customers can focus on creating incredible user experiences, while we take care of the arduous task of rights administration and royalty payments.”
About Audible Magic
For more than 20 years, Audible Magic has innovated solutions to identify content, provide fulfillment solutions, manage rights, and monetize media. Audible Magic’s Emmy-winning automatic content recognition (ACR) technology powers billions of monthly transactions. The Silicon Valley pioneer is the trusted intermediary between major platforms and rightsholders (including labels, studios, distributors, publishers, and collectives). The company works with a wide range of platforms and rights holders, including Facebook, Twitch, SoundCloud, Dailymotion, ShareChat, Vimeo, NBC Universal, Universal Music Group, Sony Music Group, Warner Music Group, The Orchard, CDBaby, and DistroKid. For more information, visit https://www.audiblemagic.com/.
Innovative Music Licensing Frameworks Will Be Key To UGC-Powered Music Expansion - Forbes
“Traditionally many people look at UGC as a promotional tool used to generate demand for music, says Audible Magic founder and CEO Vance Ikezoye, who has more than 20 years of professional experience in the music industry. “But it’s really a new form of content with big potential for platforms and content owners…people go to TikTok, not for the music, but for the creativity and creation opportunity.”
Read the full article by Forbes here.
ShareChat taps Audible Magic for copyright-spotting tech - Music Ally
Indian social media company ShareChat has become the latest customer for Audible Magic’s rights management and content recognition tech.
It will be used to “proactively address both licensed and misuses of copyright media” on ShareChat’s app, which has more than 160 million monthly active users.
Read the full article by Music Ally here.
ShareChat partners with Audible Magic to identify copyright content - The Economic Times
Audible Magic hosts a comprehensive reference registry containing over 40 million registered works from global and local music labels and is a leading tool for content identification. The partnership will enable ShareChat, which operates in 15 local Indian languages, to proactively address both licensed and misuses of copyright media.
Read the full article by The Economic Times here.