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Business News Digital Labels & Publishers
Dutch society to offer Warner’s pan-European publishing licence
By CMU Editorial | Published on Monday 19 January 2009
More MIDEM, and major publishers Warner/Chappell have announced another European collecting society will offer its Pan-European Digital License.
This is part of Warner/Chappell’s attempts to offer online music services pan-European licences, so they only have to deal with one European collecting society rather than societies in every territory.
The publishers have started offering such deals [a] because it’s a sensible thing to do and [b] because of those previously reported concerns expressed by the European Commission regarding the anti-competitive nature of the European collecting societies.
The UK’s PRS For Music, Germany’s GEMA, Sweden’s STIM, France’s SACEM and Spain’s SGAE already offer the licence, and now Dutch society Buma/Stemra will do so too.
Confirming the deal, Warner/Chappell International Legal And Business Affairs Vice President Jane Dyball said this: “We are pleased to be welcoming Buma/Stemra on board the initiative and delighted that they have agreed terms with us to obtain the rights they need to license our repertoire on a pan-European basis. An additional benefit of PEDL is that it gives us complete transparency into the licences which societies have entered into before joining the initiative, and where necessary the ability to require adjustments to those agreements, something we typically have not been able to do before”.
Buma/Stemra’s CEO Cees Vervoord added: “We are excited to join PEDL which we support as a pro-right holder, pro-society, and pro-user initiative. This deal extends our partnership with Warner/Chappell and strengthens Buma/Stemra’s position with respect to the rollout and implementation of competitive new licensing models in line with the needs of today’s market. Buma/Stemra has over the last few years made tremendous efforts towards becoming the most efficient society in Europe with the lowest operating costs and we are pleased that we can deliver the service that Warner/Chappell Music is requesting from its partners”.
