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.
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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