Digital distributor INgrooves has started a music publishing services company with a business model that will place it in competition with the likes of Kobalt.
The move is in response to many INgrooves artists and label clients taking control of some or all of their publishing rights and asking the San Francisco-based company to administer them, according to INgrooves CEO Robb McDaniels.
GET THIS WEEK’S ISSUE OF BILLBOARD MAGAZINE HERE“Much of the data that’s needed to effectively identify and collect monies owed is already handled by our ONE Digital platform,” he said in a statement.
The company has hired Olivier Chastan, formerly with VP Records and its Greensleeves Records & Publishing company, to oversee the new effort.
At launch, INgrooves is already administering more than 5,000 copyrights, which include songs by such acts as Moby, Federico Aubele, Metis and N.A.S.A. and publishing catalogs by the likes of Music Dealers and Dirty Hit Records.
The company says it will provide clients a complete array of music publishing services, including direct registration and collection with societies worldwide and a suite of creative services from sync to A&R.
In launching a music publishing company after starting the INresidence artist music services operation, INgrooves envisions a music industry where brand-name artists and songwriters no longer have to do deals with labels and music publishers.
Industry members often compare Kobalt and INgrooves to each another, since both offer new models that leverage technology and provide transparency, McDaniels says.
In the beginning, however, McDaniels says that the publishing operation will initially have four or five employees, but can leverage INgrooves’ sizable backroom infrastructure for functions like accounting and legal.
Through its collection of sales and streaming data from the digital services to which it supplies master copyright records, it can help predict payments from mechanical royalties collection societies and/or digital music services around the world, McDaniels says. Not only is that supposed to result in more efficient collections, it will also allow INgrooves to finance marketing campaigns based on the knowledge of how successful a song or an artist is in a certain territory, he adds.
INgrooves, which is owned by investment firm Shamrock Holdings, is positioning itself to take advantage of the fragmenting retail ecosystem that pays revenue to copyright owners from an increasing number of global sources.
In order to provide a user-friendly portal to songwriters so that they can see what’s happening with their copyrights, INgrooves has partnered with U.K.-based Sentric Music, which will provide back-end systems support as well as its international direct collection network. Partnering with Sentric “super-charges the launch of INgrooves’ music publishing services,” McDaniels says.
“Our combined vision for the music rights business, coupled with the synergies between our respective technology platforms, will provide one of the most efficient and advanced music rights services available on the market,” Sentric Music CEO Chris Meehan said in a statement.
Related
