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Business News Digital Labels & Publishers
ICE launches new self-service licensing tool for smaller digital music services
By Chris Cooke | Published on Wednesday 29 April 2020
Copyright hub ICE has announced the launch of a new product called Licensr, what is describes as “a new online self-service tool that enables smaller online music services to get multi-territory coverage for use of the ICE Core repertoire in a matter of minutes”.
The aim is to “simplify life for those developing new music services” and to “increase the speed new services can be brought to market”.
ICE is the digital licensing hub owned by collecting societies PRS, STIM and GEMA. It has three main areas of operation: connecting the databases of song right collecting societies; processing digital royalties for societies and publishers each month; and negotiating multi-territory licensing deals with streaming services on behalf of multiple song repertoires.
It’s in the latter domain that Licensr sits, with digital services that have under 250,000 euros a year in revenue the target for the new service. The licence provided by Licensr cover songs from what the copyright hub called the ICE Core repertoire, which includes works from participating collecting societies like PRS, STIM, GEMA and IMRO, as well as some of the music publishers that work with ICE on digital licensing.
Launching the new service, ICE’s VP Commercial Ben McEwen said: “Licensr is a simple self-service solution to enable new and developing music services to license ICE Core repertoire. It starts to bring greater simplicity and flexibility to those with ideas for new services that utilise music but are daunted by the complexity of licensing and we are keen to collect feedback to further enhance the solution over time”.
“In the meantime”, he went on, “it immediately adds another income source for creators as we continue to seek to ensure rightsholders in the ICE Core receive fair value for the use of their work”.
The first client of the new product is a service called Exit Live which offers fans audio recordings of concerts. Its CEO, Pascal De Mul, added: “Simple licensing is essential to helping services like us innovate and focus on our core proposition, which for Exit Live is helping artists monetise live performances both at the time and historically. Licensr has been by far the easiest rights process we’ve had”.
