During the last year, you’ve been reading about our plans to license your music for online and mobile Europe-wide.
Publisher members have recently received a contract which enables them to sign their repertoire to the MCPS-PRS Alliance for exclusive representation across Europe for online and mobile. The contract we’re asking publisher members to sign is recommended by the Music Publishers Association (MPA) whose independent lawyers were fully involved in its preparation.
digital service providers will choose their repertoire
from a handful of rights societies
Over 500 publishers had signed up by mid-February and many more of you have been in touch with questions ahead of signing. We print some of them, and the answers, on page 14. We run through the process for writers on the same page.
One of the main questions we are asked about Pan-European licensing is: Why the need for change? And the answer is that the digital marketplace needs it and the European Commission requires it. Delegates at this year’s Midem in January heard this message from all sides; licensing simplification was the order of the day.
We acknowledged in my Midem panel, titled The New Deal of Licensing, that Europe’s ‘patchwork quilt’ approach to licensing was being unpicked and that the Alliance was leading the way. Until this year, any digital service provider looking to license on a Pan-European basis would have done so by collecting licences territory by territory around the ‘European quilt’ of collecting societies. Now, though, the situation is changing rapidly towards a repertoire-based licensing model whereby music users will choose the repertoire they need for their services from a handful of rights societies.
We announced the first example of the new way of licensing last year. Working in partnership with German society, GEMA, we are now licensing EMI Music Publishing’s repertoire for online and mobile across Europe. The new Alliance Pan-European contract we are asking publishers to sign enables the same approach to repertoire-based licensing to be adopted for them.
Other European societies are following the Alliance lead. A combined French, Spanish and Italian repertoire offering will be available to digital service providers later in the year.
So Europe’s collecting societies are sweeping aside decades of working practices to deliver new solutions to the licensing challenges that online is demanding of us.
licensing simplification is the order of the day
We believe it is in your best interests to sign up to the Alliance Pan-European licensing solution for online and mobile now. We believe the Alliance is best positioned to be your digital rights partner across Europe, licensing your music to digital and mobile service providers most efficiently; delivering you more money, more often and at less cost.
www.mcps-prs-alliance.co.uk/licensingthefuture
Steve Porter is Managing Director of the MCPS-PRS Alliance