What is ICE?
Prior to the launch of ICE, our copyright database, back office systems and supporting IT infrastructure were in parts over 25 years old, and as such PRS for Music explored ways to upgrade them. We thought about developing solutions internally, but since every collection society needs to maintain essentially the same databases and operate similar back-office processes it made sense to look at partnering with others.
We have partnered with the Swedish collection society STIM, through the International Copyright Enterprise (ICE) joint venture.
Ultimately, ICE will provide our complete range of back office functions, with the front office being run by PRS for Music and STIM for our member groups. Potential also exists for ICE to be commercialised in order to offer back-office services to additional collection societies and other organisations.
With ICE we are creating:
- one combined ICE database from the 17 million works registered with PRS for Music and STIM with one, agreed view of each work
- ICE business processes
- new ICE Copyright system
These will all combine to enable much faster processing and more accurate distributions for our members.
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Why do we need ICE?
In 2005, the European Union (EU) issued a “Statement of Objection” (SOB) to encourage music societies to create a competitive environment in the online world. The EU Commission were concerned that organisations were unable to buy a single Internet license for all of Europe. Instead they were required to deal with each music society separately. It is likely that the EU will enforce this SOB, and therefore it is vital that societies react and join this new, more competitive environment that is offered through ICE.
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How does ICE differ to the way we previously processed registered works?
ICE focuses on processing active works. An active work is one that is either-
- Licensed (product)
- Has been performed
- Notified by members
- Distributed
- And/or subject to a Counter Claim
Members will see a slightly different view of their works in the Online Registration system depending on whether they are active or inactive. Currently, 40% of works are active at any one time.
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