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Business News Digital Labels & Publishers
Peermusic and APRA/AMCOS do pan-Asian licensing deal
By Andy Malt | Published on Thursday 31 July 2014
Music publishing company Peermusic and Australasian song rights collecting society APRA/AMCOS have announced a new pan-Asian licensing agreement. Under the deal, APRA/AMCOS will represent Peermusic’s catalogue in all Asian territories, except Japan, on a non-exclusive basis.
Peermusic’s President Of Asia-Pacific And Strategic Markets Mary Megan Peer said of the partnership: “At a time when digital music use is growing in all countries in this region, licensing our catalogue to digital services is increasingly important. By leveraging the APRA/AMCOS team’s experience in digital licensing and strong backend systems, we expect to be able to license and collect more efficiently, creating a better experience for licensees and increased income for our writers”.
APRA/AMCOS CEO Brett Cottle added: “Users are consuming music in more ways than ever before and we are working hard to ensure songwriters are fairly compensated for the value their work creates no matter where, how or when it is delivered or consumed. We’re excited to increase the opportunity for Peermusic’s diverse catalogue to reach audiences throughout Asia as new legal mobile and online music and audio-visual platforms gain traction. In many cases Asia is at the forefront of these new digital services and we are proud to be the trusted partner throughout the region for both Universal and now Peermusic. We look forward to bringing other publishers into the fold”.
Traditionally in the scenarios where collecting societies license on behalf of publishers and songwriters they do so only in their home territories. However, in the digital domain, this has proven limiting, as most digital services want to operate in multiple countries. To that end in Europe some collecting societies are now offering multi-territory licences for some of the catalogues they represent.
Meanwhile in Australia, APRA/AMCOS entered into a partnership with Universal last year that is similar to the new Peermusic deal, so that it also represents the major in various Asia Pacific countries on digital matters.
