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Business News Deals Labels & Publishers
New collecting society hub to employ existing ICE brand
By Chris Cooke | Published on Monday 2 November 2015
European collecting societies PRS, STIM and GEMA have announced the name under which their new joint venture hub will operate. Are you ready for the big reveal? It will be called ICE. Which is the name under which the existing joint venture between PRS and STIM operates. Well, if it ain’t broke I guess. And it’s not broke, right?
As previously reported, the new hub will see the three song rights societies work together on licensing multi-territory digital services, processing income from digital platforms, and managing song ownership data. In the latter domain, PRS and STIM have had a similar data exchange system in place for a number of years which already uses the ICE brand.
The three main elements of the new JV’s business will be known as ICE Licensing, ICE Services and ICE Operations. The former will be led by PRS’s digital man Ben McEwen, who takes up the new role of Commercial Director of ICE Licensing, while Neil Jones will be seconded from PRS to become Services Director for ICE Services. Both will report to PRS boss man Robert Ashcroft who, as previously reported, will also be CEO of those strands of the new ICE business.
He told reporters this morning: “The DNA of this hub has been forged from the same qualities as the ICE copyright database, which was in itself born of collaboration and a strong will to solve big problems in the market place. ICE is a truly mass market proposition that will appeal to the widest cross section of rightsholders and digital service providers operating across Europe. ICE builds out the brand with a truly flexible suite of options. It is set to deliver security, speed and reliability very cost effectively to all customers”.
