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Business News Deals Digital Labels & Publishers
SACEM announces Euro-repping deal with SOCAN, expanding the Armonia network
By Chris Cooke | Published on Monday 6 June 2016
Don’t be thinking it’s only PRS, GEMA and STIM who are busy building a licensing hub in Europe, on no! You can stick your ICE back in the freezer thank you very much, let’s talk about Armonia.
SACEM in France, SACEM Luxembourg, SGAE in Spain, SIAE in Italy, SPA in Portugal, SABAM in Belgium, Artisjus in Hungary and SUISA in Switzerland are all part of the Armonia online licensing alliance. Oh, and AKM in Austria joined last month, did I mention that? Plus ‘armonia’ sounds like it could kill you, which is an added benefit. Unless you speak Italian of course, in which case everyone’s working in harmony.
Anyway, French collecting society SACEM has just announced a new deal with its Canadian counterpart SOCAN which will see the former represent the latter’s repertoire in pan-European digital licensing scenarios, like with those streaming services that are so fashionable these days (minus those bits of the SOCAN Anglo-American repertoire already directly repped by the majors for digital in Europe, obviously, but glad you asked). “SACEM will be the first society in Europe assigned to represent the digital rights of a North American music rights organisation in pan-European licences”, brags the French collecting society.
What’s all this got to do with Armonia? Well, “SACEM is a founder member of Armonia”, says the French society, “and the SOCAN/SACEM mandate will be handled through the Armonia platform. In that framework, SOCAN will join the Armonia community and directly benefit from the simplicity to negotiate with one voice with digital service providers and the processing services which provide automated data cleansing and enrichment, leading to more accurate identification of works”. Good times. Let’s all have a glass of Orangina to celebrate. Oh hang on, we said no ICE.
Oh well, SACEM boss Jean-Noël Tronc is here with a quote: “We are very happy with SOCAN’s decision, which illustrates our commitment to improve efficiency in the digital environment for fair and transparent online revenues to songwriters, composers and music publishers. The SACEM/SOCAN agreement will enhance the Armonia community, for the first time extending beyond Europe”.
And here’s Eric Baptiste, CEO of SOCAN, who’s based in Toronto so has plenty of ice to play with come winter: “This agreement means that SOCAN’s more than 135,000 members will benefit greatly from further improved tracking of royalties in the burgeoning European music market. Thanks to this partnership, we look forward to bringing even better returns for Canada’s songwriters, composers and music publishers, allowing us to participate even more deeply in the emerging global marketplace”.
