7 Hard but Very Telling Questions for Your Automatic Content Recognition Vendor (ACR)
Consider These Issues to Avoid Costly Mistakes
Whether you are focusing on copyright compliance or licensing content for UGC, the choice of an automatic content recognition vendor may seem ancillary to your platform; the reality is that it is a crucial decision for your business. Choosing the wrong vendor can be costly and limit your ability to grow, significantly degrade your user experience, expose your service to large volumes of takedown notices, or worse.
Finding the right ACR vendor that will help you meet your compliance and licensing needs involves quite a bit of research. You may have spoken with colleagues, combed through several vendor’s websites, and possibly met with the sales representatives. Before you sign on the dotted line, there are a few key and often over-looked questions that will drive your decision.
1. Does the ACR vendor have a customer list? Are they the vendor of choice for the top platforms in the world?
Audible Magic’s customer list is a who’s who of the UGC sites both in social media and music distribution, including such services as Facebook, Instagram, Twitch, Vimeo, CD Baby, SoundCloud, The Orchard and Dailymotion, and many, many others.
Rightsholders recognize this and work with us to manage the appropriate use of their content. The list of rightsholders who proactively register with Audible Magic consists of over 140,000 music labels and over 1000 video suppliers across the globe. Our registry includes content from industry leaders such as Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Sony Pictures, CBS/Showtime, Disney, NBC Universal, Warner Music Group, FOX, RTL Group, Grupo, and Canal+.
2. How does your vendor mainly acquire their customers?
Audible Magic is proud and humbled that we have built a business on unsolicited references from rightsholders and platforms. We continue to earn this praise through continued technical innovation and proven performance over many years.
3. Are you interested in a transactional relationship, or are you looking for a trusted advisor that is experienced and understands the latest regulatory changes?
At Audible Magic, we bring 20 years of experience with all types of business models. We have long-term relationships with key players in the industry and understand the challenges of compliance and licensing. We have top players on our team from the industry with extensive knowledge of rights management as well as an understanding of automatic content identification. With each identification, we understand that we are helping you make decisions that will impact your business.
Although you may think you are only buying a transactional service with Audible Magic, you are gaining access to a team with in-depth industry knowledge that can guide you through issues such as the recent changes in the EU Copyright Directive (aka, Article 17).
4. Will you have access to a support team or a bot?
Audible Magic has an experienced team of customer support analysts here to support you via phone or email 24/7 if needed.
5. Do you want a vendor that has been working to build a trusted bridge between platforms and rightsholders, or do you want a vendor that has been servicing only rightsholders?
Audible Magic has been building a trusted bridge between the rightsholders and the platforms by providing services that bring clarity to the use of audio and video. Other vendors come from a very combative history in the industry. As a platform, what kind of vendor do you want to hire? At Audible Magic, you are our customer, and because of our position in the industry, we provide a balanced bridge between rightsholders and UGC services.
6. Does the solution sound too general-purpose or feel too slick? It probably is.
We deal with many types of platforms with different business models and have found that a one-size-fits-all solution, well, doesn’t get the job done. We work with our customers to provide the best result for their specific needs, resulting in extremely high accuracy rates and at extremely high volumes (hundreds of millions of transactions per day).
The ability to provide highly accurate identifications allows your business to grow without human intervention, constantly reviewing misidentified files. You’ll want a service that minimizes the impact on user experience. Imagine telling a user that the file he just uploaded includes unauthorized copyrighted material, and it actually doesn’t. That happens with solutions with other vendors and is extremely rare with Audible Magic’s technology.
When it comes to licensing, some customers need to administer directly licensed deals, while others need sub-licenses. Your ACR vendor should be flexible enough to meet your needs for compliance, licensing, and reporting.
7. New is not necessarily better. Do you want to entrust the future of your business to unproven technology or business acumen?
Audible Magic has assembled an innovative and experienced team that has kept pace with the latest developments in the industry, whether it is short clip length or creating a solution to identify covers. Our ever-growing list of patents (51 and counting) shows we mean business when it comes to innovation. Twenty years doesn’t mean staid. It means we have successfully, over the last two decades, met the challenges our customers continuously bring us.
Twitch is Working on a Way to Delete all Clips More Easily
Over the last week, numerous Twitch streamers have been hit with DMCA takedown notices for copyrighted music, with some being targeted for years-old clips. In response, Twitch said it is creating the ability for streamers to delete all of their clips more easily as a way to avoid getting a copyright strike. The platform also said it will use Audible Magic a long time provider of automatic content recognition (ACR) services to Twitch to scan existing clips with copyrighted music and delete those without penalizing the streamer.
Read more here.
6 Things You Must Ask Your Automated Content Recognition (ACR) Vendor
Automated Content Recognition, or ACR, has become an integral part of the consumption of music and video as we experience them today. As more platforms publish user generated content, effectively monitoring use of copyrighted material has become increasingly difficult. So, how does one choose an ACR vendor that can be relied on?
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Guest post by Audible Magic VP of Product Development and Marketing, Jay Friedman on Hypebot.com
Automated Content Recognition (ACR) is essential to music and video consumption as we know it today.
An important aspect for companies distributing content with music and video is the aspect of digital media rights. With the explosion of user generated content, it has become increasingly difficult to monitor and manage the proper use of copyrighted material.
Platforms distributing user generated content typically come from a purely technological background and can easily overlook important aspects of digital media rights. This oversight can cripple a business either via an infringement lawsuit or shortage of capital, especially since content platforms vary widely from large technology providers to popular apps to yet undeveloped offerings.
As an example, the European Union recently approved Article 17 requiring companies who host user generated content and have a European presence or customer base to take responsibility to either license works or prevent usage of unlicensed user-uploaded copyrighted material. If a user uploads a piece of content that infringes copyright, the platform is at risk. According to Article 17, platforms must filter users’ uploaded content for copyright materials or have a license for it.
What’s an online platform to do? Finding a vendor for ACR is a vital business activity for those who are subjected to dealing with digital media rights. This technology puts in place a method for platforms to protect copyrighted content from being improperly used. But with several to choose from, what is the criteria to look for? How does one determine which vendor is appropriate for their business? How can one ensure that the services provided are cost-effective and necessary? Here are six things to look for (or even ask directly) when making a determination.
What is the pedigree of the technology?
ACR is a technology service, so it only makes sense to start the hunt for a vendor by exploring the merits of the technology itself. Ask if the vendor holds patents which the ACR is built upon, or if the technology is licensed from another company. The answer will give you a clue if the vendor will be capable of addressing emerging market challenges in stride. A strong R&D department is a great indicator of a vendor that seeks to push the industry forward.
Does the service scale well?
Does your company need to monitor the usage of a handful of digital media rights, or do you have to cover just about everything under the sun? Several pop-up ACR vendors have appeared recently to address the former, sometimes licensing technology or developing a service that satisfies one specific task needed. These pop-ups are worth investigating if your needs are truly specific and limited in scope, but take caution to ensure that they’ll be able to handle an increased workload as your service demands grow and – more vitally – the amount of content that needs to be scanned or monitored increases.
What is the technology’s false positive rate?
Take heed of the false positive rate, the fine print statistic that cuts through any misleading marketing metrics. If a vendor boasts scalability as a primary value proposition, asking about false positive rate is the follow-up question that will help you find out if service quality was sacrificed in order to achieve scale. A false positive rate of even 0.5% means that for every 1,000 pieces of digital media scanned, five will be mistakenly given an incorrect attribution of ownership. The effect that this has on user experience cannot be understated. A spotty experience easily translates to the loss of users or customers.
Who are the customers?
This segues neatly into the next question. The music industry is chalk full of long-standing partner relationships. Top labels are going to work with vendors they trust to protect their catalogs, and will be hard-pressed to change from companies they trust to do the job right. On the flip side, UGC platforms want to ensure they are in full compliance for rights usage and desire a vendor that understands international nuances – that their vendor has they’re backs. Entertainment may be “fun” to the everyday citizen that consumes media, but in the business world the emphasis is on the bottom line and sound practices. If you recognize a vendor’s customers as major players, that’s a good indicator that the vendor has an established cadence of trust.
What will this cost?
ACR is the technology that the digital media rights ecosystem can’t afford to not have. That said, what good is an ACR vendor if a company can’t afford the service in the first place? Vendors shouldn’t offer a one-size-fits-all solution at a single premium price; rather, cost should reflect the level of service that is being provided. After all, distributors and platforms have varying policies and needs when it comes to identification reporting. Some companies seek basic identification, while others desire advanced reporting and other features. Know what your needs are before you shop, or find a vendor that will help you determine what’s right for you based on your business model and policies.
Will the vendor find ways to open new revenue streams?
This question falls outside the normal line of thinking for basic software-focused ACR vendors, which makes it a hardnose test of business smarts. Those who know how the digital media rights landscape works will be able to work collaboratively with you to suggest and enable new revenue streams. Not only should a vendor have a line of questioning to understand your business model and connect the dots, they should be actively engaged in trying to improve your company. This doesn’t fall outside of the realm of what should be expected from a vendor, because savvy ones know that your success ultimately becomes their success. This line of thinking makes an ACR vendor a valuable asset as an advisor. Keep in mind there’s no substitute for management that has been there, done that, and can draw from the industry to help you succeed.
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MORE: DistroKid Links With Audible Magic To Verify Music Authenticity, Launches DistroLock
Guest Post on 06/13/2019 in Music Business, Music Tech, Publishing & Songwriting, Streaming, YouTube & Video | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: ACR, Amazon, Apple, Apple Music, Google, indie, metadata, music, music business, music industry, music tech, musician, musicians, Pandora, Spotify, YouTube
https://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2019/06/6-things-you-must-ask-your-acr-vendor-.html
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.
Audible Magic Receives Its 30th Patent Award
Latest Patents Add to Portfolio in the Areas of Audio and Video Content Recognition and Related Services Optimization
LOS GATOS, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Audible Magic, the leading provider of enterprise-class automatic content recognition (ACR) solutions announced that the company was recently issued three new patents. This brings the total patents awarded to the company to 30 overall in areas such as digital fingerprint-based media detection technology, detection of content on media-playing devices, identification of content flow across networks, and approaches to media identification information systems performance.
“Audible Magic’s intellectual property portfolio, plus our experience in massively scalable content identification and information services, makes the company’s offerings a preferred choice among the largest names in media and technology industries”
The recently-issued patents include:
- European Patent EP 1 490 767 B1, for copyright detection and protection system method regarding digital data processing. This patent involves identifying, reporting, and/or protecting digital works from unauthorized transmission and/or copying, such as over networks or network segments connected to the Internet.
- U.S. patent 8,732,858 B2, for identifying digital data content; a computing system selects data from an unknown work and detects each event. It determines an event metric between each successive event and generates a list of metrics between the events, comparing event metrics for the unknown work to those of a known work, to determine if the unknown work is a copy of the known work.
- U.S. patent 8,645,279 B2, in copyright detection and protection system method, for detecting against unauthorized transmission of digital works.
The generation of patents by this privately-funded company has enabled Audible Magic to establish itself as the leader in ACR solutions. “Audible Magic’s intellectual property portfolio, plus our experience in massively scalable content identification and information services, makes the company’s offerings a preferred choice among the largest names in media and technology industries,” said Vance Ikezoye, CEO. Visit Audible Magic’s website for the full patent documents.
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, generate usage reporting and activate content monetization. Audible Magic’s customers and partners span technology, entertainment and media industries and include industry leaders such as Dailymotion, Ensequence, Sling Media, Sony Music and SoundCloud.
How to Register Content With Audible Magic
Following Vimeo’s recent announcement of Copyright Match, which utilizes Audible Magic’s hosted content identification services, there have been a lot of questions about how to register in Audible Magic’s global content registry.
First, a bit of background. Audible Magic’s registries store audio fingerprints – compact numerical representations of unique acoustical qualities – that allow registered audio content to be matched against samples taken from Vimeo user video uploads. Vimeo, along with a number of other video hosting services, social media sites and cloud file storage services, use Audible Magic to help mitigate unauthorized use of copyrighted works.
As a content owner, fingerprinting and registering your works may help limit unauthorized sharing in the many places where Audible Magic services are deployed.
Content producers who work with established music labels, TV networks, motion picture studios or their distributors are likely already covered in Audible Magic’s registry databases. Those industries have incorporated Audible Magic software tools into their release workflows, which cumulatively register fingerprints from over 250,000 new titles per month.
Independent content producers typically work with digital service providers or distributors that likewise submit fingerprints to the Audible Magic registry. Producers should ask their providers if they offer an Audible Magic fingerprinting service. Audible Magic licenses Windows and Linux-based software tools, free of charge, allowing providers to bulk-scan content and upload fingerprints to the registry.
Loudeye and Audible Magic Announce Digital Music Tracking and Management Solution
Companies Come Together to Provide an Industry Standard Solution to Music Labels, Rights Organizations, Licensed Music Services, Broadcasters and Retailers
WASHINGTON, D.C. — January 7, 2002 — Loudeye Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq NM: LOUD), a leading provider of Webcasting and digital media streaming services, and Audible Magic Corporation, a provider of content-based identification (CBID) technologies, today announced at the Future of Music Conference in Washington D.C., the immediate availability of a digital music tracking and management solution.Read more