BMAT and Audible Magic Partnership to Deliver Global Music Rights Administration Services to the Metaverse
BMAT Music Innovators and Audible Magic Partnership to Deliver Global Music Rights Administration Services to the Metaverse
Los Gatos, Calif. – April 19, 2022 – BMAT Music Innovators will team with Audible Magic to deliver a world-class rights and royalty administration service to Digital Service Providers (DSPs). Music licensing is quickly evolving with the rapid technological advancements in social media, fitness, gaming, podcasts, live streaming, NFT platforms, and other Web 3.0 applications. Rights administration vendors need to keep pace with the ever-changing needs of these emerging DSPs. The partnership between BMAT and Audible Magic combines the industry-leading capabilities of both companies in content recognition, content fulfillment, data matching, royalty and claims reconciliation, machine learning, and copyright expertise.
The administration of music licenses worldwide requires scalable and flexible technology solutions combined with a global view of music rights to ensure DSPs and rightsholders can effectively work together to deliver outstanding music experiences around the world. This partnership lets users listen to the music they want and how they want it while artists, songwriters, and other rights holders are correctly paid.
BMAT works with all industry players to amplify the value of music, including over 100 Collective Management Organizations (CMOs) and Performance Rights Organizations (PROs) across 124 countries. As part of its mission to index all music usage and ownership data, BMAT facilitates a thriving relationship between DSPs and CMOs, at both operational and business levels. By bringing their technical expertise into play, they enable the automation of metadata-complete music reports from over 40 DSPs worldwide.
"We're delighted to partner with Audible Magic to support and enhance the processes behind music usage for various platforms. Their turnkey services of music delivery and identification, as well as relationships with record labels combined with our understanding and associations with publishers, CMOs, and PROs will enable platforms to better manage music licenses and reputation within the creators' community," said Jakue López Armendáriz, VP of Digital at BMAT.
"This partnership will be a net positive for both music creators and businesses since it'll make it much easier for new platforms to include music in their services while ensuring that creators get paid accurately and fairly," said Dani Balcells, BMAT's Regional Manager for North America.
Audible Magic, known for its Emmy award-winning automated content recognition services, has added the world’s most extensive music catalog in the last year consisting of over 100 million tracks, music fulfillment, and rights administration to its capabilities. Platforms that provide music-based experiences, whether it is user-generated content (UGC) on social media or virtual experiences in the metaverse, can engage one vendor, Audible Magic, to help power those experiences to end-users no matter their location.
“I am excited that we have found such a complementary partner in BMAT. Managing music rights requires different approaches from territory to territory. The partnership combines our strengths to bring creative music delivery and licensing models to the market,” said Vance Ikezoye, President and CEO of Audible Magic. “BMAT’s capabilities are a key part of Audible Magic’s ability to provide platforms with a single point of contact to use music in territories worldwide seamlessly.”
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/.
About BMAT Music Innovators
BMAT is a music innovation company with a mission to index all music usage and ownership data. They help all different companies in the music industry better their data operations to make sure artists get paid for their plays. Every day BMAT delivers 27 billion matches and 80 million identifications to CMOs, publishers, record labels, broadcasters, and DSPs globally.
Driven by machine learning and copyright expertise, BMAT’s Music Operating System pumps neutral data and authoritative knowledge to everyone along the chain. Everyone who makes or uses music can plug in to ease operations, increase earnings, and get in sync with everyone else.
Contacts:
Julia Hutchinson
Audible Magic Marketing Manager
[email protected]
Diana-Emilia Bolboacă
BMAT Communications Manager
[email protected]
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.
Music Industry Moves: Critical Content, Quality Control Join Forces for Urban Music Film and TV Projects - Variety
"Vydia has entered into an agreement with Audible Magic which will allow independent creators to access a catalog of new music for customers such as social networks, gaming, and fitness platforms. Vydia’s library includes work by Five Finger Death Punch, Russ, Akon and Kanye’s Sunday Service Choir and also acts as a white label service for 40 music labels."
Read the full article by Variety here.
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/.
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.
Is The MLC Part of Your Overall Licensing Strategy?
The Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC) continues to make strides in building its new team and has already begun to receive payments from digital service providers (DSPs). It is great to see the progress in a much-needed organization that will help simplify license administration for rightsholders and DSPs in the United States.
Some may be unclear about the scope of The MLC in the complete context of all of the rights required to distribute music. All entities that use music, whether on streaming sites, social networks, workout platforms, or yes, even permanent download stores, need to understand if The MLC fits into their overall licensing strategy or not.
What is The MLC?
The MLC is an organization born out of the Music Modernization Act of 2018 (MMA). The MMA updated how mechanical rights in musical compositions are licensed for music streaming and download services. Previously, under Section 115 of the U.S. Copyright Act, DSPs downloading or streaming music could use a compulsory license to license the mechanical rights in musical compositions made available through their services. Using this type of license, a music user would be required to license each musical composition on a share-by-share basis and to provide notice reporting and payments to publishers, administrators, and self-administered songwriters, composers, and lyricists. With the massive volume of music these platforms host, the process was challenging to say the least.
Under the MMA, qualifying DSPs in the United States can elect to secure a blanket mechanical license for music for streaming and downloads. The MLC was created to administer this license, and all DSPs which obtain the license send a monthly report and payment to The MLC. The MLC will then disburse payments and reporting to the publishers who have registered on The MLC portal.
The establishment of The MLC will provide greater clarity, licensing certainty, regular reporting, and accountability, all of which will help both the music industry and the platforms.
The MLC is Only Part of the Overall Licensing Solution
The responsibilities of The MLC are laid out in Section 115 of the U.S. Copyright Act and were designed to meet a specific need for administering rights for music audio between publishers and DSPs for downloads and streaming. Considering what The MLC does not cover brings to light what additional steps a digital platform may need to take to be fully licensed.
Record Label Deals:
The MLC administers a blanket license for the mechanical rights in musical compositions required for a service to offer downloads and streaming music. Platforms will still need to license, report, and pay royalties to the record labels for the use of the sound recordings in which these musical compositions are embodied.
Location:
The blanket license administered by The MLC is only available for services made available in the U.S. If a DSP is downloading or streaming music outside the United States, it will need to ensure it has licenses to use the music (both the sound recordings and the musical compositions) in those territories.
Types of Licenses:
The MLC does not administer any other types of licenses or royalties besides the blanket mechanical license for streaming and downloads, and voluntary licenses for the same covered activities. Licenses The MLC does not administer include:
- Public performance licenses
- Synchronization licenses (audio tied to video)
- Sound recording licenses
- Licenses for physical products such as CDs
Licensing Examples – What is covered, what is not:
Let’s look at a couple of fictional music hosting platforms and what they should be thinking about in their licensing strategies. You should consult with an experienced music licensing professional such as a music lawyer or advisor when developing your own licensing strategies.
A medium-sized social network hosting user-generated videos with music in the US and the European Union: The blanket mechanical license from The MLC is designed to address platforms downloading and streaming music. This type of license covers audio, but not audiovisual. Thus, it does not address any music use occurring in a user-generated video. The DSP would have to have direct licenses with the label and the publisher. In addition, the social network is doing business outside the United States and will have to consider how they will license music in multiple territories with both publishers, music rights organizations, and labels.
A medium-sized music streaming service providing interactive music streaming in the United States: Such a service would be eligible for a blanket mechanical license under Section 115 of the U.S. Copyright Act. The MLC would administer the license, and the DSP would report and send royalties to The MLC. The DSP would also need to obtain a license from, and report and pay royalties to the performing rights organizations for the public performance rights in the musical compositions and the record labels for rights in the sound recordings.
Although The MLC’s scope is not all-encompassing, it does cover one of the more common ways recorded music is made available in the United States today and is a step in the right direction in managing the challenges of music license administration. However, for those hoping to host music on their platform, whether for streaming, downloads, fitness apps, gaming, or UGC, companies need to have a complete licensing strategy in place.
The team at Audible Magic will continue to monitor The MLC’s activities and hope to provide more information in the future. In the meantime, check out the resources below.
- Music Modernization Act: https://www.copyright.gov/music-modernization/
- The MLC: https://www.themlc.com/
Audible Magic – Powering Music Online
Leveraging our fully rights-managed catalog of over 100 million tracks, Audible Magic enables platforms to use music via our comprehensive licensing, fulfillment, identification, and rights administration services. Our bespoke scalable solutions enable the use of music in a myriad of use cases including UGC, downloads, streaming, and radio.
This blog is issued for informational purposes only and is not intended to be construed or used as general legal advice. Please contact the author(s) or your Audible Magic Corporation contact if you have questions regarding the currency of this information.
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/.
Audible Magic Acquires SOCAN's MediaNet - Hypebot
Canadian PRO SOCAN has sold its global content fulfillment and rights administration service MediaNet to Audible Magic.
Read the full article by Hypebot here.
Audible Magic acquires rights administration business MediaNet from SOCAN - RightsTech
SOCAN and Audible Magic have also announced they have entered into a strategic partnership with the goal to use Audible Magic technology and services to help SOCAN improve operational accuracy and reporting to publishers and songwriters. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Read the full article by RightsTech here.
Audible Magic Acquires Rights Administration Business MediaNet from SOCAN - Music Business Worldwide
Digital content identification, licensing, and monetization platform Audible Magic is acquiring content fulfillment and rights administration business MediaNet from Canadian performing rights organization, SOCAN.
SOCAN and Audible Magic have also announced they have entered into a strategic partnership with the goal to use Audible Magic technology and services to help SOCAN improve operational accuracy and reporting to publishers and songwriters.
Read the full article by Music Business Worldwide here.