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.
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 Partners with Audible Magic to Manage Licensed and Unlicensed Use of Music - Yahoo News
Sharechat, India’s largest Indian social media platform, announced it has partnered with Audible Magic, the leading provider of rights management and automatic content recognition (ACR) solutions. ShareChat chose Audible Magic for its comprehensive reference registry containing over 40 million registered works representing global and local music from across the world. Audible Magic is considered the gold standard for content identification and will enable ShareChat to proactively address both licensed and misuses of copyright media.
Read the full article by Yahoo News here.
ShareChat Partners with Audible Magic to Manage Licensed and Unlicensed Use of Music
Los Gatos, Calif. – Nov. 9, 2020 – ShareChat, India’s largest Indian social media platform, announced it has partnered with Audible Magic, the leading provider of rights management and automatic content recognition (ACR) solutions. ShareChat chose Audible Magic for its comprehensive reference registry containing over 40 million registered works representing global and local music from across the world. Audible Magic is considered the gold standard for content identification and will enable ShareChat to proactively address both licensed and misuses of copyright media.
“With a growing community of users and the large volume of fresh new content created every day, ensuring copyright protection is an important goal at ShareChat,” said Berges Y. Malu, ShareChat director. “With the addition of Audible Magic’s audio fingerprinting technology and their expertise in automatic content recognition solutions, we look forward to a partnership that will help us achieve our goal.”
ShareChat is a first of its kind language-focused social platform for emerging markets with more than 15 languages currently supported. With a community of more than 160 million monthly active users who generate almost 2 million content posts daily, the platform is the largest repository of Indian language content.
Every month, Audible Magic searches billions of files looking for copyright content registered by over 140,000 record labels and music publishers. Its comprehensive reference registry contains tens of millions of registered works representing music from over 150 territories, with hundreds of thousands of new tracks added each month. Search results operate on files as short as five seconds and typically complete in one second or less, with virtually zero false positives, which is key to scaling, automating, and ensuring a smooth user experience.
“We are pleased to help ShareChat proactively identify authorized and unauthorized use of copyrighted music,” said Vance Ikezoye, president and chief executive officer at Audible Magic. “ShareChat is a great example of a platform that strives to be a good partner with the music industry.”
About Audible Magic
For more than 20 years, Audible Magic has innovated solutions to identify content, manage rights, and monetize media. Audible Magic’s Emmy-winning automatic content recognition (ACR) technology powers billions of transactions monthly. The Silicon Valley pioneer is the trusted intermediary among rightsholders (including labels, studios, distributors, publishers, and collectives) and major platforms. For more information, visit https://www.audiblemagic.com/.
About ShareChat
ShareChat is a leading Indian social media platform that allows users to share their opinions, record their lives and make new friends – all within the comfort of their native language. Spearheading India’s internet revolution, ShareChat is changing the way in which the next billion users will interact on the internet. For more information, download the ShareChat app from the Google Play Store or visit https://we.sharechat.com.
Contacts:
Adriana Saldaña
Sterling Communications for Audible Magic
+1 408-395-5500
Rahul Nag
ShareChat
Music-Related User Generated Content Could Be Worth $6BN Over The Next Two Years (Report) - Music Business Worldwide
User-generated content could be worth around $6 billion to the music industry over the next two years.
That’s according to a new white paper published by London-based MIDiA Research, in partnership with Audible Magic, entitled The Rising Power of UGC, which examines “the rising power of UGC and the untapped opportunity to monetise the growth in UGC consumer behaviours and new platforms."
Read the full article by Music Business Worldwide here.
User-generated content to contribute $6 billion in music-related revenues by 2022 - MusicWeek
User-generated content is set to provide a fast-growing revenue stream for the music industry, according to a new report.
The Rising Power Of UGC, published by MIDiA Research in partnership with Audible Magic, has forecast music-related UGC advertising revenue over the next three years.
Read the full article by MusicWeek here.
Audible Magic Sponsors MIDiA Research Report on The Rising Power of User-Generated Content
UGC is the next music industry growth driver and the short-term opportunity is worth $6 billion
London and Los Gatos, Calif. – Oct. 26, 2020 – User-generated content will contribute a significant proportion of the growth in music consumption over the next two years in an opportunity that is worth circa $6 billion to the music industry value chain. Rights holders could see $3.2 billion of this in the next two years, as a new report by MIDiA Research in partnership with Audible Magic, has found—with UGC already having contributed over one billion dollars to global music revenues in 2019.
‘The Rising Power of UGC’ report, which is available to download for free here, examines the dramatic and continuing growth of UGC creation and consumption and highlights that this ongoing expansion requires the implementation of new, simpler licensing frameworks, especially for music.
This report also considers some of the implications of the 2019 EU Copyright Directive, which acknowledges the importance of UGC in today’s economy and presents unique opportunities to encourage the growth of the digital streaming market.
The rising power of UGC is reflected by the sharp growth in social media platforms in 2020, totalling 7.7 billion gross users. Lil Nas X’s Old Town Road, as one example, set a new course for music industry marketers by becoming the first clear example of the ‘song as a hashtag’ – turning a song from a TikTok meme into a global smash hit. More than two billion streams later, almost every marketer in the industry is hoping to repeat the song’s success – though not necessarily with a clear blueprint as to how to do that.
Social media and UGC platforms do not respond to traditional licensing structures and as a result, opportunities are being missed. Framing these trends within the poor performance of ad-funded models, the slowing down of subscription revenues and the absence so far of alternative ways to monetise fandom, the report advocates new ways for the industry to approach UGC to become a win-win for technology platforms and content providers. Social media platform advertising revenue, meanwhile, totalled $119 billion in 2019 – a huge addressable market, while in-app purchases and virtual merch are emerging forms of monetisation.
Content owners might well ask “what’s next?” But what’s next is already here: social media is the new music consumption; it just isn’t being fully monetised or utilised.
Commenting on the implications of these shifts for content companies, a major label executive said: “It is important for music content owners to start imagining UGC as another format or channel for the delivery of music rather than simply as promotion or audience development.”
Mark Mulligan, MIDiA Research’s managing director said: “As music subscriptions edge towards maturity in many Western markets, the music industry needs new growth drivers. UGC has long been under-monetised for music rights holders but its potential now is bigger than ever.
“We are entering into an era where we are all becoming creators, whether that be editing digital photos, making a lip sync video or even creating a mashup. We are leaning forward and interacting with our content more and more, with more tools at our disposal. Music continues to be the soundtrack to both our lives and to UGC content. We sit on the cusp of the next chapter in music consumption and monetisation.”
About Audible Magic
For more than 20 years, Audible Magic has innovated solutions to identify content, manage rights, and monetize media. Audible Magic’s Emmy-winning automatic content recognition (ACR) technology powers billions of transactions monthly. The Silicon Valley pioneer is the trusted intermediary among rightsholders (including labels, studios, distributors, publishers, and collectives) and major platforms. For more details visit our website: www.audiblemagic.com
About MIDiA Research
MIDiA Research is a market intelligence and consulting firm with longstanding expertise in the business of entertainment and digital media. We help businesses formulate commercially actionable strategy to navigate the evolving digital landscape. Our clients leverage our expertise, proprietary multi-country consumer data and market forecasts to enable smarter and faster decisions. We work with record labels, TV networks, streaming services, tech firms, financial organisations, gaming and sports companies, providing unparalleled insights into trends and innovations shaping the entertainment market and audience behaviours. For more details visit our website: www.midiaresearch.com
Contacts
Julia Hutchinson
Audible Magic
Dara Jegede
MIDiA Research
User-Generated Content Brings Creators, Users Closer and Blurs Promotion With Consumption [Keith Jopling] - Hypebot
“It is important for music content owners to start imagining UGC as another format or channel for the delivery of music rather than simply as promotion or audience development.”
Read the full article by Hypebot here.
Audible Magic Monetizes Music On User Generated Content
Automatic content recognition (ACR) solutions provider Audible Magic has launched its UGC Music Rights Platform (UMRP), which simplifies the licensing and administration of music rights for user-generated content on social media.
Read more here.