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Digital
GEMA licenses iTunes Match
By CMU Editorial | Published on Thursday 22 December 2011
Well, an albeit mini-survey of CMU readers on Twitter has resulted in almost universal praise for iTunes Match, the scan and match service offered by Apple to simplify the process of setting up a digital locker on the IT firm’s servers. So, German readers, go play why don’t you, because yes, German collecting society GEMA has licensed the service. And that’s news, people, because GEMA, representing German songwriters and music publishers, is notoriously hard to please when it comes to digital services.
GEMA has licensed Apple’s digital locker on a suck-it-and-see basis, with a one year agreement. Says the collecting society: “A temporary one year contract with GEMA made this agreement possible. [Fees for] iTunes Match are to be collected in the first twelve months and the terms of the contract adjusted if necessary at the end of this period. Under the terms of the agreement, copyright holders are to receive a certain flat-rate portion of sales per user”.
GEMA has been coming round to more digital business models of late, with Deezer and Rara.com recently licensed to enter the German market, to compete with the likes of Simfy, a German-based streaming platform.
Of course the big one is Spotify, which is still not available in Germany because of GEMA, though with the Swedish service having reduced the extent of its freemium option (which GEMA bosses didn’t like) it’s thought even that could finally get a licence from the German collecting society at some point in 2012.
