Global Repertoire Database announces location plans
The Global Repertoire Database (GRD) – the project that will catalogue the world’s music – has announced that it will set up its global headquarters in London and will base its operations centre in Berlin.
The London office, housing corporate functions and business development capabilities is scheduled to open later this year, and will work alongside the current London-based project team in the first instance. The Berlin operations centre will provide registrations and data processing facilities, and may provide a template for further operations centres to support the global operation as it grows.
The GRD is a global, cross-industry collaboration to deliver a single, comprehensive and authoritative representation of the authorship and control of musical works worldwide.
When completed, the main benefits of the GRD will be to create a new and more effective global infrastructure for music rights management, leading to an improved path to music licensing for digital and other music services, and to efficiency benefits for the whole music ecosystem saving extensive costs currently lost to duplication in data processing.
The decision to locate the Global Repertoire Database in two world capital cities, London and Berlin, was taken after a detailed selection process by the GRD working group, facilitated by our business partner, Deloitte.
Potential locations were assessed and analysed over a long number of months and the decision was not at all easy as some excellent candidate cities were under consideration. Availability of suitably skilled staff, accessibility for global industry participants, and strength of legal protection for intellectual property were important criteria and of course the global nature and requirements of the GRD is a key consideration.
We are happy to have a home for the Global Repertoire Database. These two great cities of Berlin and London with their proud heritage and strong support for authors’ rights and for copyright will serve our needs very well. We can now turn our attention to building the world’s first authoritative database of musical works and to creating a completely new system of rights management that will benefit creators globally.
The Global Repertoire Database is necessary for the effective functioning of the rights licensing, management and royalty payment systems of musical works in the 21st century. A single, authoritative global view of music ownership in real time will mean that anyone wanting to set up a music service can do so more quickly – and that means more legal choice for music fans and consumers, and a more efficient way of identifying who should be paid royalties for the use of their music.
Licensees of music will welcome the news that the Global Repertoire Database now has concrete plans for its future. We believe this development is a major step forward for those of us who license music rights as part of our core businesses. Whilst we can’t expect the GRD to solve all of the licensing challenges that digital presents us with, a single database with global visibility of musical works ownership certainly gets us closer to a more user-friendly system and demonstrates very positively that the whole industry can work well together.
The next stage of development in the GRD project is the technical build, during which the systems and processes required for the new database to interact with existing licensing and payment systems will be structured. GRD systems will be fully compliant with existing rights management solutions FastTrack and ICE, who are technology partners in the project.
www.globalrepertoiredatabase.com
Contacts and further information about GRD:
Global: Adrian Crookes (adrian@junctionpr.com)
Local media representatives:
Australasia and Asia: Kirti Jacobs (kjacobs@apra.com.au)
France: Catherine Boissière (catherine.boissiere@sacem.fr)
Germany: Katharina Reindlmeier (kreindlmeier@gema.de)
Spain: Antonio Rojas (arojas@sgae.es)
Sweden: Karin Jihde (karin.jihde@stim.se)
UK: Barney Hooper (barney.hooper@prsformusic.com)
US and South America: Lauren Iossa (liossa@ascap.com) and Silvia Davi (SDavi@bmi.com)
Notes to editors:
About the Global Repertoire Database (GRD)
The GRD (www.globalrepertoiredatabase.com) is a project to provide, for the first time, a single, comprehensive and authoritative representation of the global ownership and control of musical works. Once deployed the GRD will save extensive costs currently lost to duplication in data processing. The project is supported by the global creator, music publisher, music collective management society and digital music service provider communities.
Delivery of the project is driven by the GRD Working Group. This consists of representatives from 14 organisations of creators, publishers, collective management societies, digital service providers and their trade associations. These are: APRA, GEMA, PRS for Music, SACEM, STIM, CISAC, Sony/ATV/EMI Music Publishing, Universal Music Publishing, Warner Chappell Music, ICMP, ECSA, iTunes, Google and Omnifone.
Thirteen collective management societies for music are supporting the project with funding, knowledge and access to their databases. These are:
APRA (Australasia), ASCAP (US), BMI (US), BUMA (Netherlands), GEMA (Germany), PRS for Music (UK), STIM (Sweden), SACEM (France), SOCAN (Canada), SABAM (Belgium), SGAE (Spain), SIAE (Italy) and UBC (Brazil).
The project is managed by Deloitte with support from ICE and FastTrack as technology solution providers.
In all, nearly 30 companies represented by nearly 100 individuals are directly involved in the project development work worldwide.
About our partners:
Deloitte: In this press release, references to Deloitte are references to Deloitte LLP, which is among the country's leading professional services firms. Deloitte LLP is the United Kingdom member firm of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited (“DTTL”), a UK private company limited by guarantee, whose member firms are legally separate and independent entities. Please see http://www.deloitte.co.uk/ about for a detailed description of the legal structure of DTTL and its member firms. Member of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited. For information about Deloitte, please contact: Laura Parsons (lauparsons@deloitte.co.uk)
ICE (http://www.iceservices.eu) is a world-class service centre for the global management of copyright. It offers a professional, trustworthy and efficient service that enables music societies to manage copyright and helps organisations, music societies and interested parties adapt to the challenges they face in today’s ever-changing rights management business. For information about ICE, please contact: Carsten Drachmann (carsten.drachmann@iceservices.eu)
FastTrack (http://www.fasttrackdcn.net) is a global technical alliance among 12 Music Copyright Shareholder societies in 11 different countries. It was founded in 2000 in order to build a global, decentralised network that allows its shareholder societies to share data on copyright documentation for musical and audio-visual works, and to streamline internal operations. FastTrack is also the technology provider for CIS-Net and ISWC-Net networks, now serving 100+ Collective Rights Management Organisations around the world. For information about FastTrack, please contact: Chris van Houten (chris.vanhouten@fasttrackdcn.net) or Annick Duflos (annick.duflos@fasttrackdcn.net)
About PRS for Music
PRS for Music is a world-leading music collective management organisation representing the rights of more than 165,000 talented songwriters, composers and music publishers around the globe. Headquartered in the UK, it works diligently on behalf of its members to grow and protect the value of their rights. With a focus on innovation and integrity, PRS for Music is redefining the global standard for music royalties to ensure creators are paid whenever their musical compositions and songs are streamed, downloaded, broadcast, performed and played in public. In 2022, PRS for Music collected £964m and paid out £836.2m in royalties. prsformusic.com
