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]
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.