Pan-European licensing becomes a reality

The MCPS-PRS Alliance has recently signed deals that will mark the beginning of pan-European repertoire based licensing.

At this year’s MIDEM we announced two new publisher partnerships with Warner/Chappell Music and peermusic that will allow the Alliance to represent their repertoire for online and mobile pan-European licensing. We also signed one of the first pan-European licensing deals for EMI Music Publishing repertoire with Omnifone.

The Alliance is one of three societies (the others being German society GEMA and Swedish society STIM) chosen by Warner/Chappell Music to represent its Anglo-American repertoire for online and mobile licensing across Europe.

The deal with peermusic will see the Alliance exclusively represent peermusic’s Anglo-American catalogue for licensing for online and mobile across Europe. (SGAE of Spain, a strategic partner society with the Alliance, will represent peermusic’s Latin-American repertoire)

PRS, GEMA and EMI signed a pan-European licensing deal with Omnifone. The deal provides Omnifone with access to the EMI Music Publishing English language repertoire.

The new deals will ensure that members and music users alike can benefit from all that online and mobile can bring in a pan-European context. And we are now working hard with our partner publishers and societies, to create a simple and effective licensing structure for our customers, that will ensure that they get the repertoire they need for their services.

The Alliance has been at the heart of pan-European licensing for online and mobile since the European Commission encouraged the creation of a framework for the administration of online music rights on a pan-European basis in October 2005. 

The Alliance already represents EMI Music Publishing’s Anglo-American repertoire (with Germany’s GEMA) for online and mobile pan-European licensing.